Dear Brother Kwame Zulu of the Shabazz family,
So you guys are still discussing the role of
Christian missionaries in the scramble for the pastures of Africa ?
Fortunately for me, the secondary school I attended was the only one in the country that did not teach religious knowledge or offer it as an exam subject. That's why I don't know much about these things.
I'm patiently waiting for Gloria in excelsis Emeagwali to butt in, then and only then will I butt in too, with some good stories about the glory of C.M.S in West Africa.
As if we don't know that the first slave ship to transport incarcerated Africans to "The New World" was called "The Jesus of Lubeck" . I wonder what the sons of the devil and the slave and plantation owners were called.
As if we don't know the first Maroon Church outside of Jamaica is located in Freetown, Sierra Leone. And what do they now say about Blyden's Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race ?
Don't mind them.
You see what happened to Martin Bernal. They ganged up against him and almost threw him into the dustbin.
Yet, the Yosef Ben-Jochannan // Ivan Sertima // John Henrik Clarke school is still exerting a lot of influence and to some extent is helping to instil some of the missing pride - in them - and to de-programme some of the gullible and most susceptible to missionary propaganda about not only the origins of their religion, but the origins of their own ancestors, not to mention their very selves. Cultural genocide is putting it mildly. What goal or destiny does anyone have when he / she doesn't know who he/she is, or where he/ she is from – if he/she thinks that on the authority of some missionary - testifying to "the blood of Jesus", no matter what he does his destination is heaven.
Reminds me of this line by the Last Poets:
"Niggers play football, baseball and basketball
while the white man cuttin' off their balls"
I'll have to re-read Armah to locate where he asks what happens to the soul/ identity of an African child who grows up being called Mike/ Michael. Unfortunately, many of our Brethren and Sistren who are the products of missionary education/ institutions feel that you are attacking them personally or pulling the magic carpet to heaven from under their feet and that it's nothing less than blasphemy or historical heresy when you level any criticism of the missionaries of their sacred religion. For the really superstitious, it could be the curse of Ham controlling such perceptions.
In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land"
And here we are talking about the Dutch Reformed Church whose theology provided the theological foundations for Apartheid. Goodness knows how the Mormons would have fared in colonial Africa since it's only recently that they too "apologized" probably in the name of Jesus of Nazareth
However another cautionary note, having taken in what Professor Mbaku has just written - that even though the Christian missionaries belong to the same general flock by their deeds / works them can be differentiated one from another. So let's face some facts: Hitler was a Roman Catholic. So were the guys who perpetrated the Inquisition - is there enough ink with which to write their iniquities?
Don't get me wrong. I just posted Eric's "Don't Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down" on the Biafra Genocide facebook site – in response to this message to encourage some Brethren and Sistren
Nor should we forget that the Black Churches provided the organisational structure that contributed so tremendously to the Civil Rights Movement in America and the anti-Apartheid campaign worldwide, over here in Sweden the Lutheran Church was quite active and once again on 24th December at our dinner table I heard once more about how my Better Half shook hands with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther king, when he was over here...
In the meanwhile we're all supposed to turn from evil and to do good.
Sincerely,
On Saturday, 4 January 2014 00:11:06 UTC+1, kwame zulu shabazz wrote:
Prof. Nketia is extraordinary. I think he must in his mid 90s by now. I interviewed him several years back and I hope to work it into something publishable at some point. Armah is my favorite writer and he is super popular amongst Black cultural nationalist/Afrocentrist of which I am a (critical) member. As you note, he has switched gears a bit since his earlier writing. He now focuses a lot on Kemet and other Afrocentric themes. Yes, Armah offers a strong critique of Christian missionaries (and Muslims) which, in his view, were the catalyst for cultural genocide.
kzs
On Friday, January 3, 2014 9:44:19 AM UTC-5, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:Amended.As I follow the missionary thread started by Oga Kwabena Akurang-Parry - the name Kwabena echoes that of another great man, the only one who lectured with a smile on his face: Professor Kwabena Nketia and thoughts about him re-turn me to the Black Star nation. I wonder, did Francis Bebey smile in the same way?The impact of the African–American presence in Ghana cannot be underestimated – from W.E. B Dubois through Satchmo, Malcolm X and James Brown, to Stevie Wonder. It's a long story, about six personal chapters. In the late sixties, early seventies of the last century, hundreds of African-Americans made it to Ghana each year, in quest of their roots. It was also Black Power times. In 1968 I also travelled by road in a Renault car with some friends from Freetown, through Liberia and Ivory Coast to Accra, the Golden City, and saw the so called National Liberation circle in downtown Accra, for myself - returned by air...
In 1970 at a point where Ayi Kwei Armah's "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" was still being celebrated I remember having a long conversation with one of my African-American neighbours in Ghana, Cyprian Lamar Rowe about the relative merits of Chinua Achebe and the new kid on the block, Ayi Kwei Armah. Cyprian, as unctuous as ever "the body is an aesthetic instrument "etc to reflect his very colourful clothing – the colours of the Ghanaian flag, the dashiki, it was the era of the Afro too – Cyprian elevated Chinua Achebe(now in the eternal beyond) far above Aye Kwei Armah who at that point had only written the Beautyful Ones and "Fragments" - in short, his main point was that Achebe opened his eyes to traditional Africa - and of course that too is to be celebrated but thought that Armah - a returnee (biographical heresy there) was viewing his society almost like a stranger, a "Westerner". Some of Armah's later work has put paid to that. One thing that Achebe and Armah have in common is their critique of missionary activity - and here Armah is even more awesome than Achebe, particularly in his venom against missionary Islam in his novel "The Healers"
Ayi Kwei Armah --- On His Work
O. S. Ogede: The question of identity in Ayi Kwei Armah's "Why Are We So Blest?"
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