Suns of Blackness

“Dude, you’re the Whitest Black man I’ve ever met.” by Khaya Maseko

What am I supposed to say to that? There’re about 5 Black people in the club that aren’t  staff. There’s some Death Metal playing in the background. The gig is awesome. It’s crowded with men and women in all kinds of edgy clothing. There are spikes, piercings, band T-shirts and leather everywhere. This being South Africa, it is not the usual to find a Black man who’s feeling right at home in this kind of environment.

But I do, sitting there in my Radiohead, Hail To the Thief T-shirt. My in-depth knowledge of Metal has obviously shown this person that I must be White inside. Words/names likeDecapitated, Six FeetUnder, Hate Eternal and The Haunted glide over my tongue as if I was raised listening to Death Metal. But  I am a product of autopoeisis, self-made and self-actualizing.

Where do we draw the line at personal personality and perceived personality? Who judges what the Black human is?

Throughout history, race has been a reflective phenomenon. One is Black because they are not White.  The opinion is thus built by attaching cultural norms to a people and marking the differences to one’s own. I have love for my Black fellow human. I am Black because the Black has faced what I have faced. I have lived and written down what I know to be the Black in me. But race is a temporary thing. The second this enlightenment came to me, I became aware that being Black was as important as being anything. If the person I made of my self was loving and productive, my Blackness would be a negligible fact. We do not live in that future, as yet. The Black human only survives because of its opposites, as light only survives because of the darkness it antagonizes. We cannot build a future like that. On this road to the future, we must note in bold type that race is only scaffolding for what the human eventually will be. It must come down, sooner or later.

One need not forget, that hundreds upon thousands have died and disappeared because they had thick lips and knotty hair. One must not forget ukubhala ngolimi lwakubo(to write in their own tongue). One, especially the Black one, must not forget hundreds of years of institutionalized hatred. One must not forget that there is a difference in people and the spaces that form and inform said people. One must be vigilant in studying their history so that they may purport the good and educate about the harms of evil-doing.Societies and cultures die because of forgetting. This is why the King Leopold burned records for almost 7 days before he finally left what was known as The Belgian Congo.  Records of any type inform and an informed ‘enemy’ is the most dangerous kind.  An informed slave populous will fight better than one with no intelligence on its oppressors. But being Black isn’t about being oppressed.

Making moves from the reactive position has more cons than pros. The Black human should only respond to the human, not the White human.

This Africa of ours is filed with Black human killing Black human. This is no Auschwitz. This is Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa and too many other places of bloodshed. The capabilities of self-punishment and self-torture are stupefying.These atrocities tend to come from the place of forgetting. The French are the least of the problem in Africa, now. Too many Francophone Blacks are killing each other for too many ridiculous reasons, which often points to lack of reason.

So, in fact, I should be proud that this man in front of me thinks I’m so White. Ah, forget his reasons, as long as he doesn’t link me to the gang-raping, drug-peddling, granny-mugging, starving, corrupt, belligerent people that I come from. Because what else do people have to remember about the Black?

History is written by winners, it is often said. Well what has the black won? Do we have claims to fame that will move Black supremacy to Reich heights? Do we even want to go there? The word ‘superpower’ hasn’t even sat next to ‘Africa’ on a train. The paradigm of the African Renaissance has been crawling on its belly for one too many decades.  If we do not make our selves, we will surely die. Surely. We have enough academic data, from Anthropology to Zoology to be proud of our selves as Africans, the diaspora firmly included. The Black will not be killed by a jaded White teenager in a Heavy Metal club. It will be killed by the self. The Black dies when he forgets. The Black lives when he remembers. The Black dies when he sees nothing to be proud of. The Black lives when he manufactures pride from the universe we all have. The powers of creation and creativity aren’t a racially exclusive thing. We have as much influence on personal image as the next human. But who is writing our history? Answer and act. Who is studying your language? Answer. Act.

We are not any better for having more White friends than Black ones. We are not any closer to ‘civilisation’ by studying German over Swahili. We are not any thing until this thing that is the Black human is self-actualizing and fulfilled by it. Be, have, do.

A Black people must be their Blackness without the White man, and they must not forget that being Black is not a race. In fact, I propose the dissolution of all racial lines, but this is a dream and the pipe is long. I my self, have never ever felt anything other than Black. The future of my family and offspring is loaded with Memories of our past Black people. How they helped shape the polity of our South Africa and the world. How they made music from the brightest pit of their Blackness

Becoming The Maker

Essays and stories about creative processes, finding ones purpose, effecting positive change and just being oneself.

When it comes to making, writing and talking about Art, it is impossible to not become sentimental or even emotional. There is just something about most Art that requires the kind of passionate out-pouring that is often commensurate to genius. This is not to say that all emotional, sentimental and passionate writers, artists and writers are geniuses, yet there must be so much zeal in the expression that it must be tempered by creative articulation and above all practiced skill.

These stories are about various experiences, performances, trials, tribulations and triumphs within the glorious and perilous world of the have given myself, in order to document the life and lives of people involved in the Arts. The feeling to do this arose when I would watch and come into often intimate contact with individuals and groups who were mostly involved in making music. Most of these people would be striving to make a living from performing, organizing events and basically being involved in all that has to do with music.

I have decided to include other forms of Artistic expression because as a Poet and lover of all things aesthetical I feel that all types of known Art are compatible, it all depends on the creative imagination of those involved, who for the purposes of this book we shall call The Makers.

Of course for those who can understand the languages of the Nguni people, it will be clear that this choice also has a lot to do with my name, which also happens to be one of the names of God. So without rubbing it in, it is a play on the concept of the Artist as a god, a divine being, a creator of the possible and even an inventor of the impossible despite any given circumstances.

Also note that some of these stories will be subjective, meaning that they are mostly personal accounts, journal entries and even direct quotations from interviews, recollections and even notes from specific reviews.

To begin with, we shall delve into the spiritual lives, the mystical or cosmological significations that often go parallel to Artistic expressions. This does not mean that all Artists are spiritually inclined. There is often a sense that Jazz Artists in particular are working with something beneath the surface of what we laymen know, that they are both engaged in entertainment while expressing the deepest part of being human. Here I am mostly talking about practitioners of Free Jazz, what others call Jazz improvisation, not the regular Standards which consists mostly of repetitions of traditional and popular tunes.

Since I shall be dealing mostly unknown, underground and also little known personalities here, it will become clear that the Artistic expression will not be limited to Jazz, we shall touch upon Reggae, Hip Hop and as already mentioned, other related forms of expression. I certainly hope that these stories will inspire, inform and ultimately create an appreciation for what The Makers, and not just the movers and the shakers do. After-all life is filled with many hidden treasures, the often overlooked lives that ultimately find pleasure, livelihood and joy in Art.

Chapter 1: Becoming The Maker

“Emotions play such a major part in peoples lives – more negative than positive – that you would thing that the powers that be in the world would institute educational programs to teach the populace to properly understand and handle them. The ancient Egyptians (the Kamau) answered this question over five thousand years ago or more. Since man’s evolutionary goal is to become a God man/woman on Earth, who is a liberated being, then man must make an all out emotional commitment to the realization of this goal. It is a 100% emotional commitment to becoming a being that is free of emotional compulsions, a being that is able to be at peace in the face of the greatest imaginable challenges. In Kemet (Ancient Egypt) it is portrayed as Auset’s (Isis) devotion to resurrect Ausar (Osiris) the divine Self in man that was murdered by Set (the Archetype of Satan).”- Ma’at: The 11 Laws of God by Ra Un Nefer Amen

I have a curious name, it is not an unusual name or one that is uncommon among Nguni language speakers, in fact during my brief travels into various parts of the united kingdom, I have discovered that there are ‘English’ variations to it, albeit with an –es in the end. When I saw trucks and containers in some airports, especially in and around Northern Ireland with the word Menzies, I was compelled to joke to someone I was walking with by saying ‘you see my name is international’.

To my knowledge, Menzi is just a word in the IsiZulu, IsiXhosa and IsiSwati which means either Maker, Doer or even the Creator. When I quizzed my parents about why they’d named me as such, they said it was my maternal grandmother’s idea. When I was born, she sang the traditional gospel song “Menzi wezinto zonke, namazulu onke…” – which translates as “Maker of everything and all of the heavens…”, and so the name stuck. Apparently my father had the name Siabonga, which means ‘we thank you’ in mind. So in retrospect I should say, thank you Granny.

I raise this matter of the name because as a Poet, I am uncannily fascinated with words, their meanings and their denotations. Yet this name has steered my life in a direction that I don’t think I would have taken if I had been stuck with Siyabonga (no offence to all the Siya’s ). To me, this is among the most creative names in the Nguni language and I know there are more interesting and Poetic ones out there, but this one also happens to be the Name given to God Itself. Thus I have striven to be such a seeker of wisdom, a ‘deep’ person as some people like to point out. This deep-thinking, searching and quest to reclaim the purpose in my name, both from the emotive perspective of my parents and also from the folk metaphysical connotations of my immediate environment has led me down the proverbial rabbit hole of experiences.

Being a naturally amiable personality, I try not to take everything too seriously, but I often find that I fail at that task. Yes, I am can be playful, happy go lucky and even naughty (to a fault), but I cannot help but think beyond the shallow, the surface of this visible world. When I saw a film like The Matrix, especially the animated prequel The Animatrix, I could not stop thinking that I am so much part of the story line, that I had actually dreamed all of it before and I had even written about some of the philosophical questions it dealt with. I did not so much think I was Neo, but more like a hybrid of Morpheus and the Oracle and even Trinity.

After watching the trilogy, I thought that all I had to do is strive to master my emotions, gain mental and physical stamina so that I could achieve some miracles in life. Without the help of religious jargon, the plethora of self-help or self realization manuals that litter the bookstores. In my mind, and perhaps even beyond my brain capacity, I know that I can and that all these tomes are mere signs, stepping stones confirming what I already know.

Beyond wishful thinking or stretching of the imagination, as Menzi, I should be able to achieve ordinary and extraordinary miracles simply by being myself, thinking the right thoughts and being at the right places at the right time, All the time. In fact the concept of time and space meant very little to me after that. So I could say that re-seeing the Matrix was an epiphany in my mind. So what has happened to the miracles, and why have I not become the miracle worker that I expect myself to be? It has been about 9 to 10 years since the last Matrix film and I am still very much an ordinary person, experiencing the struggles, aberrations and temptations that everyone goes through. I am still not motivated by money, speculations or even the stuff that religions promise to every believer. Yet I believe that before I pass over, there is at least One ‘miracle’ or paradigm shifting feat that I will be remembered for.

So I guest, there’s more to Self realization and Self actualization than simply knowing about it. To say I think and know I can, is not the same as actually Being that which we can be, can do or can make. Theologians and experts in human potential and behavior say that there is nothing that one does that makes them extra-special in the Universe or in God’s eyes. It is neither goodness nor righteousness that guarantees one an entrance into the heavenly abode, but there is still something to be said of Free Will. So this means that somehow, I still have each moment of my life to realize, act and practice being the Maker, to realize the true meaning of my life, aside from minor achievements, or minor or major failures. This is not only true for people with loaded names such as mines, but for all human beings who strive to become someone in life. But there is this ‘belief’ that everyone needs someone else in order to fully realize their purpose, the old adage that’ no man is an island’ holds true.

In order to become the Maker that I already know I am, I need to congregate, to commune and to give in to or submit to another being, another force. Even biblically, Jesus/Yehoshua the Christ submitted to the council of his Father – God and required the acquiescence of certain disciples in order to fulfill his mission, a mission which he appears to have dreaded, yet due to its purpose, had to be fulfilled: “He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, ‘my soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” He went further and bowed with his face on the ground, praying. “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” – (Matthew 26:36 – 39)

If even the gods of this world ( some would say the God) require collaborators and even additional strength and the Will of the Higher powers to fulfill their destiny, then it proves that even mere mortals or lesser divinities such as myself need communion in order to become the Maker. So does this mean that one cannot fulfill their purpose and still live to tell the story?

How about many of those over-achievers who not only gain material wealth and fame, write books about it and their stories are told to posterity, how did they manage to be masters of their own destiny?

It is clear that there is no simple answer to such a question; it is after all the very subject of many books, films and legends. We are inspired by the stories of Jesus, the Buddha, Tarhaqah, Osiris/Ausar, Haile Selassie I, Queen Nzinga, Mother Teresa, Queen Mkabayi  and many others who made a lasting impression on the psychology of mankind. The issue of whether their stories were real, embellished or totally metaphorical is not the subject here, what matters is that they managed or their stories were able to change the way we see and live in the world.

There are no accidental makers, accidental names or accidental miracles. Everything, including the improvised notes of a Jazz musician, the free-style poetics of the Rap emcee are well placed, meant moves that contain within them the Universal blueprint of causality. We can even say that one depends on both free will and fate, the well placed syncopation of tones, notes and anecdotes to arrive at the destined place. One can say that all of reality, the fatal incident and the happy coincident are all part of One continuum, both pre-determined and willed by some One, somewhere at a certain time. The Matrix is instructive:

“Tonight is not an accident. There are no accidents. You did not come here by chance. I do not believe in chance. When I see three objectives, three captains, three ships; I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see promise. I believe it is our fate to be here. It is our destiny. I believe this night holds, for each and every one of us, the VERY MEANING OF OUR LIVES.”  - (Morpheus’s speech from Reloaded)

Matt Lawrence, the author of the book Like A Splinter In Your Mind: The Philosophy Behind The Matrix Trilogy adds:

“- He suggests that events in the world are all coalescing around a higher aim or purpose. And yet, despite this inevitability, he still believes in REAL CHOICES – as only partial fatalism allows. He makes this clear in his conversation with the Merovingian:

Merovingian:   You see there is only one constant, one universal; it is the only real truth – causality. Action, reaction; cause and effect.

Morpheus:       Everything begins with choice.””

The stories I have used here are only illustration of a Truth that we all should know. They can all  be seen as parables reminding us that we are all Makers and breakers of our own destinies. Much of what we choose to do determine what we become and what becomes of us even after our bodies have decayed in the soil or evaporated with the fires of existence. Master musicians do not gain their greatness by playing alone to the audience, but it is the many hours spent practicing their craft, both in solitude and within a group that their true worth is accentuated.

With this I reassure myself and you that we are liberated beings who are our own makers and un-makers. We do not have to believe in each others God to do this, we can just do it.

Njeza’s Dlamini’s Story In Short

One of the most amazing human beings I have ever met is a Durban based guitarist by the name of Njeza. When I was finding my feet as a young Poet in and around the BAT Centre – an Arts Centre (which we shall tell more about later), I encountered an elderly yet quite jovial and eccentric gentleman who I never had the opportunity to see sober. King Njazz as I affectionately call him had a love for as much passion for his guitar as he had for a certain beverage called Black Label. Needless to say that after a couple of Black labels at the BAT Centre’s ever changing (perpetually under new management) Bar, this always well dressed and lanky man would take to the stage and improvise on his own versions of some of the traditional Afro-Jazz, Mbhaqanga and even some Rhythm and Blues tunes.

Njeza would never wait for an audience to fill the seats or ask for any permission from the Restaurant/Bar owners; he would simply take to the stage and star riffing. He could sometimes play for hours without taking a break, aside maybe from fetching or calling for another Black Label, casually taking a slow swig and then resume playing what seemed like an beginning-less, lawless and endless strumming in and out of countless recognizable and sometimes obscure melodies. The music defied any categorization and it seemed to be pouring out of the man rather than the instrument itself, once sounding like Philip Tabane, Jimmy Hendricks and George Benson all at the same time.

Once after one of those rebellious solo sessions, a few of which I would join him with my amateur drumming or with my impromptu Slam Poetry or singing, we ended up talking and the subject turned to politics and the way in which a lot of people undervalue live music. I got home and began to write about our conversation with a hope that I would actually make some time to interview this enigmatic, struggling artist who exuded so much positive energy and was so well spoken. Looking at his face though one could not help noticing that underneath all that passion and beautiful music, there was some hidden pain. But perhaps a closer listen to the music would reveal that the pain was not so well hidden at all.

I will transcribe what I wrote then, directly onto these pages, so that the feeling I had at first is not lost:

Feeling For The Beyond:

Liberating Mculo: Will I Am John, John Coltrane!

If I had to speak in the language of the Buddhists or the Vedic sages, I would say that John Coltrane the tenor saxophone supreme wizard managed to free himself from Samsara.

It is also possible that he gave himself what the Japenese siren Miho Hatori called “Sweet Samsara”. Wikipedia gives various interesting translations of what Samsara means – Continuous Movement, and its found in several Far Eastern languages including:

Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Thai, Vietnamese.

Essentially, “it is a Pali term which translates as Continuous Movement or continuous flowing and in Buddhism, refers to the concept of a cycle of birth and consequent decay and death. It can only be escaped through enlightenment. Samsara is continuous suffering and or (dukkha) and is generally considered the antithesis of Nirvana which literally translates as extinguishing or unbinding. According to the Buddha, the beginning point of Samsara is not evident, just as there is no beginning point to a circle….”

This may all sound strange to a novice, since I begun by saying the Jazz artist freed himself while also saying that he also gained himself ( giving himself sweet samsara), but this is exactly the nature and complex simplicity of Brother John Coltrane, who is dead but never really dead. But then again, someone might claim that artists, writers and other creative geniuses never really die since they leave a long lasting legacy and an inheritance to be followed by many generations to come.

Yet this is different, when we say that the Trane is still moving, we mean it quite literally, we are talking about something much more than a recording artist, someone who exuded and produced a music so profound that life and death were both compounded and subdued in the sound. Please follow me as I re-type some telling passages from the liner-notes of the album Giant Steps:

“All musicians worth hearing during and beyond their time keep growing as their music deepens its hold on the listener. But John Coltrane committed his very existence to continually searching for more possibilities in his music – and therefore, in himself.

After all, he once told me, “the music is the whole question of life itself.”

At home, John Coltrane would practice for hours, sometimes silently – just running his fingers over the keys. He’s pick up new instruments and meditate and listen to recordings of Indian music and the sounds and rhythms of South African pygmies (Khoi San).

At one point, he decided to have two drummers in his group. He went on to add two bass players for a recording. I asked him why, “Because,” he said, “I want more of the sense of the expansion of time.”

A quiet man, excerpt when he played, he would talk softly about his reason for being.“I’m not sure of what I ‘m looking for,” he said to me, “excerpt that it’ll be something that hasn’t been played before. I don’t know what it is,I know I’ll have that feeling when I get it.”

And when he got it, audiences would sometimes shout because of the release of feelings in themselves.”

This is how Nat Hentoff, Co-Editor of The Jazz Review attempted to sum up the work of the Jazz giant at that particular time. It was all about the perfectibility of a feeling, an effortlessness that demanded thorough practice and dexterous composition yet at the same time so deeply spiritual that audiences were both disturbed, moved and emotionally challenged by Coltrane.

The music seemed to come from the man and not just the instrument and this cry was the cry of a man who was seeking the ultimate expression of Self Realization through umculo/music/ngoma.

It is no wonder that he kept a close ear to the rhythms and spiritual elements of India and even he neglected sounds of the South African indigenous peoples, the search was for something beyond the pale, a music which was once was lost to the crowd and could now be found in the freest expression that ever was, Jazz. Yeah, Jazz, listen to it at your own risk!!!

Music Without Fear:

This is a story, well it really is just an introduction for a couple of album reviews that I found interesting. Sometimes I enjoy reading album reviews before or after listening, yet there are times when I do not get to hear the music at all, just enjoy reveling in the Poetic nuances of the words and images.

Fortunately, for those interested in delving deeper into the ‘real’ music, and other parts of the creative process, I have added some links and recommendations:

The following is ‘lifted’ from the Brainfeeder collection of label-mates,.* (add links and pics)

1)

“RYAT
TOTEM
BF029

1. Windcurve
2. Owl
3. Howl
4. Seahorse
5. Hummingbird
6. Footless
7. Invisibly Ours
8. Object Mob
9. Invisibility Cage
10. Raiz
11. Totem

Brainfeeder presents the album Totem by new signee RYAT, a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer of avant-garde electronic music. A serious oeuvre, Totem blends classical elements and cinematic sounds with big beat influences and experimental time changes. Twisting through the gritty, disheveled beats like an elegant ribbon, RYAT’s gracefully processed vocals merge with electronic surprises to create a work of intense abstract art.

Trading the urban jungle of Philadelphia for the concrete badlands of Los Angeles, RYAT’s transformation was juxtapositioned with a new awareness of her natural surroundings and unexpected visits from animals, whose dream partners give the album its name. Every track of Totem represents a different spirit animal, each with a message translated through RYAT’s experimentation with unusual sound signatures.

Lead single “Howl” moves from a thatched start right into a swollen groove, with beats collected into random tide pools, full of unforeseen sounds. Footless” builds tension into a celestial knock with an off-kilter gallop that flies skyward, while the loose drums of jazz-influenced “Object Mob” generate an unexpected emotion of freedom.

Giving us just a glimpse of her journey through fire-filled vocals and captivating sonic twists, poetess RYAT lays an emotional path into a dream where animals speak in music and the beats have come alive.” - Brainfeeder

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2)

“You know that old saying, it’s not the destination but the journey that matters most? The same can be said about the creative process. Some of the most revealing aspects of any project occur during the act of making it. So we say, forget your final version—we want to get into the nitty gritty of your piece in its rawest form. We want to get to know the Work In Progress.

Throughout his career, Strangeloop has progressed his audio and visual endeavors simultaneously. As a member of Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder crew, he’s released his own productions, as well as created videos for the likes of Daedelus, Jonwayne, Mono/Poly, Lorn, and Austin Peralta, and he’s performed live visuals for an even more impressive roster:Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, Flying Lotus, Kode 9, Hudson Mohawke, Gaslamp Killer, Mary Anne Hobbs, Dorian Concept,Nosaj Thing, Araabmuzik… the list goes on and on.

Distinct as his style is, filled with alien landscapes, unidentifiable imaginary organs, and fractal patterns, his visuals are tailored to the sound of each musician. Lorn gets a looming army of menacing black dominoes, Gaslamp Killer amystic Middle Eastern tapestry, and Daedelus a Victorian stroll on acid.

CONTINUE READING ARTICLE AT: ANAMNESIA / THE CREATORS PROJECT .” – Brainfeeder*

The Science Of Black Noise

This deals with the notion that different people love and hate or are completely oblivious to other forms of music. Once certain people are exposed and get to dig a certain sound, be it popular or avant garde, there seems to be very little that can convince them otherwise. Not everybody is eclectic and not everyone is solely into the mainstream scene.

With these story we shall once again delve a little deeper into the his/her-story of popular music and try and ascertain just what makes certain noises more acceptable than others. We shall start with a brief history of Black Popular music.

It is said that, “ A San Francisco bandleader, Art Hickman, and his pianist-arranger Ferde Grofe’ are generally given credit for inventing the type of dance band which dominated popular music for half a century. Around the time of the First World War they were among the first to write separate music for the reed and the brass sections, combing the higher & lower instruments in each section into choirs, but for dancing rather than listening, as in John Phillip Sousa’s concert band. Hickman seems to have been the first to hire three saxophones, enabling him to write richer harmonies. He also wrote songs, among them ‘Rose Room’, published in 1917. It is surely no coincidence that ‘Rose Room’ is the sort of tune that lends itself to an interesting arrangement, and was recorded by Benny Goodman’s sextet nearly 25 years later or that Duke Ellington’s ‘In a Mello tone’ (1940) is a counter melody to it.” –

Tommy Johnson’s classic ‘Cool Drink of Water Blues’ begins with the famous line ‘I asked her for water/ She gave me gasoline”, and his ‘Canned Heat Blues’ gave the white blues band of the 1960’s its name( Canned Heat ), canned heat was used in cooking stoves; the best known  - It could be dissolved and used as a poisonous beverage by alcoholics.

Bracey was Johnson’s sidekick and recorded a water and gasoline lyric the day after Tommy did. Johnson made a few recordings, but through his unique guitar playing he was one of the most influential of all, along with Robert Johnson. Tommy’s brother Ledell who taught him some guitar, said that Tommy had acquired his final polish by selling his soul to the devil. Son House said the same thing about Robert Johnson, who was not at first thought to be a good player, but disappeared for a while and then turned up much improved.

In the hands of the greatest masters, the blues guitar sang with intensity, and Robert Johnson was a complete master. ‘Hellhound on my Train’ and ‘Me and the Devil Blues’ are perhaps his most apposite titles.

Johnsons death was violent and said to involve a woman; his acolyte Johnny Shines had heard that it was something to do with the black arts. It is now suggested that Robert Johnson was a far more ‘sophisticated’ performer than was hitherto thought, which makes his legacy all the mire interesting. John Hammond tried to find Johnson for his 1938 ‘From Spirituals To Swing’ concerts he produced in 1938 – 9 represented a turning point in American popular culture.” – The History of Popular Music*

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Soul music!!! Bobby Womack The Bravest Man In The Universe

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Tracklist: 1. The Bravest Man In The Universe 2. Please Forgive My Heart 3. Deep River 4. Dayglo Reflection (feat. Lana Del Rey) 5. Whatever Happened To The Times 6. Stupid Intdrolude (feat. Gil Scott-Heron) 7. Stupid 8. If There Wasn't Something There 9. Love Is Gonna Lift You Up 10. Nothin' Can Save Ya (feat. Fatoumata Diawara) 11. Jubilee (Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around) Release Date: 06/12/2012 user rating 3.6 great recommended by reviewer Bobby Womack Anthology Gil Scott-Heron I'm New Here Anthony Hamilton Comin' From Where I'm From Maxwell BLACKsummers'night   On 1 Lists 4.5 superb PorkchopExpress USER (24 Reviews) June 9th, 2012 | 3 replies | 571 views Summary: For his first album of new music in 18 years, Bobby Womack is given the same treatment as Gil Scott-Heron on [I]I'm New Here[/I], with the same spectacular results. For the first moments of Bobby Womack's The Bravest Man In The Universe, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were about to hear a complete return to form for the legendary soul singer. And who could blame them? The album opens with nothing but Womack's (still amazing) voice belting out the album's title, with nothing but a simple string arrangement to back it up. But at twenty seconds in--when a slightly robotic-sounding female voice speaks the title, finally giving way to the glitchy synths that push the track along--they'd realize they were half-right. What they're hearing is Womack completely back on top of his game, but transported into a new era. This isn't even modern-soul. This is post-modern soul. It all makes sense when you realize who's involved in the creation of the album. First and foremost is XL Recordings owner Richard Russell, who also helmed Scott-Heron's I'm New Here with similar finesse. Secondly is Blur/Gorillaz/etc. mastermind Damon Albarn. As producers, the duo manages to work magic. Their soundscapes are completely essential to the album as a whole, yet at no point do they overstep their bounds. This album is still completely Womack's show, yet without their production the album wouldn't feel quite as vital. Take "Whatever Happened To The Times?" as an example. With its gloomy organs and synths bubbling underneath, the biggest weapon the song has is still Womack's weather-worn voice. And though the production never feels intrusive, it compliments his vocals in the best possible way. The album constantly feels like a group effort, and one that wouldn't work as well if it were missing a piece of the puzzle. Even the few guest spots were chosen wisely. Some will be put off by the appearance of Lana Del Rey in "Dayglo Reflection", but trust me when I say that's their loss. With its strange, otherworldly samples underlying the mournful piano, the song is an absolute stunner. And while Scott-Heron's appearance is limited to a short, spoken-word intro, its a nice nod to an artist who did something similar with Russell just a few years prior, and is unfortunately no longer around. Womack has had a life filled with personal turmoil, with problems from addiction, his controversial marriage to the widow of Sam Cooke, all the way up to his recent cancer battle, and it shows in the tone of the album. The album is far from upbeat, and it shows in the titles themselves, with songs like the wistful "If There Wasn't Something There" to the only slightly-peppier "Stupid". None of this is to say the album is an entirely dire affair. Two of the final three songs are upbeat, sunny songs that come through even brighter with the gloom that hangs over much of the album. However, the album highlight is still the single, "Please Forgive My Heart", which is where everything falls together perfectly. It's an old-school soul song trapped in an electronic body, a sound of the 70's colliding full-on with the year 2012. It's the track that encapsulates everything this album does so well: it caters to long-time fans of Womack while most likely helping him find new fans who may not be familiar. And if this album can make someone who falls into the latter category search out some of his older material, then it's successful. Luckily for everyone else, it just so happens that every other facet of the album is successful as well. Share: Facebook Stumble Digg Twitter Del.icio.us

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PorkchopExpress June 9th 2012 221 Comments

Album Rating: 4.5 So, I can't edit the (failed) italics out of my summary right now, and that sucks. Here's a stream, for those interested. And seriously, "Please Forgive My Heart" is an absolute monster of a track. http://www.bobbywomack.com/ Digging: Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man In The Universe Digging: Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man In The Universe

Ethiopedia or Encyclopedia for Ethiopia: Ethiopic: An African Writing System by Ayele Beker...

Ethiopedia or Encyclopedia for Ethiopia: Ethiopic: An African Writing System by Ayele Beker...: This is a book with many purposes. Beyond accounting the history and principles of Ethiopic, this book challenges the accepted instituti...

The Faith Of Our Fathers?

www.africansway.co.za

The Communists and I – Volume 2

Towards A Socialist   Azania And /Or A Democratic South Afrika

Part Two of the Refutation of the ultimate revolutionary ideal essay

Date: 04/07/2012

“You cannot make a perfect law but you can make a perfectible law which can then be improved.” – (Swiss Prime Minister as heard on CNN’s Global Lessons: The GPS Road To Saving Health Care.)

“So he declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you are going over to possess it.” – (Deuteronomy 4:13 -14, Torah)

“Talking of health, in socialist countries medical services are free of charge. When necessary, doctors make house-calls. In hospital patients receive free treatment and food until they are completely recovered. While on sick leave people receive up to 100% of their average monthly pay. In a society dominated b propertied classes the working man cannot receive such treatment.” – (page 33, The Economic System of Socialism, from Political Economy of Socialism by Nikolai Kolesov)

“We are by no means communist. Neither do I believe for a moment that the unrest is due to communist agitation. --- but the primary reason behind the unrest is simple lack of patience by the young folk with a government which refuses to change, refusing the change in the educational sphere, which is where they the [the students] are directing themselves, and also refusing to change the in a broader political situation. --- I personally would like to see fewer groups. I would like to see groups like ANC, PAC and the Black Consciousness movement deciding to form one liberation group. It is only, I think, when black people are so dedicated and so united in their cause that we can affect the greatest results.” – (Steve Biko – answering questions on Black Consciousness stance in Chapter 18 of I Write What I Like: Our Strategy for Liberation)

“Consider that the socialist, the Communist and the Trade Unionist of the white race are all agitating for higher wages and better living conditions. It is evident that these economic improvements must only come at the expense of greater exploitation of the weaker peoples. The weaker peoples before were the Chinese, the east Indians and the Negroes. The Chinese have organized national resistance, the Indians have also organized national resistance, it is only the Negro, therefore who is exposed to the most ruthless exploitation in the future and surely the low class working white man will stop at nothing to raise his status even as controller of government through Communism, even though it crushes the Negro.” – (page 298, Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons, ed. Robert A. Hill, Barbara Bair, A Centennial Companion to The Marcus Garvey And UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION PAPERS)

“Above all, to thine own self be true.” –

Chapter 1: God and the Devil are in the details

I decided to begin this chapter with a whole page of quotations, partly because I am aware that I may not be the most academically qualified person to write an exhaustive analysis of socialism and communism, but it is a task that I am daring to apply myself to doing. Secondly, there have been many leaders from many Black liberation movements who have been confronted with the question of where they stand regarding communism and its ubiquitous companion, socialism. Some of these leaders have been quoted here and I will strive to explain the full meaning of their statements, according to the context, their time and also try to see what they believed and whether these doctrines are any good for the total liberation of our beloved Land.

I have mentioned elsewhere that one of the reasons that I have resisted becoming a member of any political party or institution is because I dislike creeds and oaths that have their roots in Europe, Greece or Rome. While this may sound naïve, juvenile or even racist, I feel justified and that it has been the primary weakness of many of the great leaders of Afrika, together with their belief in the God of the aggressors.

While it is clear to any student of history that the faith and political education of the liberators of Afrika (even though the project is still far from complete) has buoyed them and helped them to navigate through the most difficult times, yet again it can be demonstrated that it is this very grasping after western norms and weapons that has ensured that we win the battles and still lose the main war, the fight for our souls, our land and our dignity.

Allow me to afro-romanticize a bit; before colonization, slavery and apartheid, it is generally accepted that Afrikan people were typically dignified, humane and also practiced something called Ubuntu, akin to what ancient Kemetens called Ma’at (Justice, Righteousness and Order). Our ancestors had their own cosmology, faith, trading or economic system and familial values, some even posit that we even traded with visitors from the Far East and also from as far north as Kemet/Egypt, Yemen, Aksum, and even with ancient Yehuda/Judaea.

Surely then some of these relationships involved some form of diplomacy and even some formal codes of conduct, and intelligence no matter how infrequent the instances were.

Clearly it is known that none of these relations ever left us out of pocket or worse still, out of land - which are ultimately connected.

Perhaps we must have been morally, ideologically and spiritually bankrupt when we found it convenient to convert to the fundamentalisms of the very people who saw and treated us as sub-human. Or were we mostly forced and subdued into following suit?

Either way, to believe what they believe must be an indication that we agreed with what they thought of us and thus we began to perceive the universe as they did; but not all of us.

The reason I bring this up is in order to show that Afrikan people did not only learn about civilization from any revelatory books or by means of the indoctrinations that accompanied colonialism, and the greed and self righteousness of missionaries, whether spiritual or political. We did not need anybody or any systems to save us from ourselves. After speaking about the virtues of Ubuntu and the revitalizing effects of Black Consciousness on live radio a couple of times, it came as a shock to me to discover that there are still so many Black people who vocalize their gratitude for colonization, the arrival of Europeans and the mental slavery that followed. I heard well travelled people, theologians, doctors and their Mama’s calling in to tell me that Black people would have slaughtered each other to extinction if it wasn’t for Gods wisdom in bringing the ‘white man’ to save us from our devilish or heathen ancestral ways.

This did not only shock me, but it also emboldened my resolve to preach Black Consciousness and what Marcus Garvey and the UNIA called African Fundamentalism. As a young man who was raised on the meek and mild principles of the Holy Bible, I had always treaded very carefully on religious territory, choosing to respect people for their choices, doing to others as I would have them do unto me. But experiences of late have caused me to decisively take a more radical approach, to reclaim my Blackness even if it means tossing aside all ideas of heaven, hell or family bonds, for what is a family if it is based on convenient Lies and the sheepish following of foreign doctrines?

Ironically, the evangelical Christian churches, especially the so called Charismatic and Pentecostal ones, of which I am a ‘product’, have a song that goes: “I will serve no foreign gods, nor angels before him…”; A rousing and spirited affirmation about serving only the God of Israel. I fortunately have already forgotten some of the lyrics, but this chorus serves the purposes of this essay as it leads us to the primary question: Who or what is a foreign god/God and how does one serve It or him?

In order to sufficiently answer this let us hear what old Marcus Garvey has said, bearing in mind that this is one of the great emancipators of the ‘Negro race’:

“The doctrine of God carries with it the belief of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Christ is supposed to be the begotten Son of God. He had a special mission and that was to take on the form of man, to teach man how to lift himself back to God. -- It is evident that Christ had in his veins the blood of all mankind and belonged to no particular race. Christ was God in the perfect sense of his mind and soul. His spirit was God’s spirit; his soul which acted on the advice of God’s spirit was never corrupt.” – (page 226, The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers, Lesson 6, Christ)

This work is by no means meant to be a theological analysis or a philosophical study of religion, but what I aim to highlight is that even some of the Blackest leaders in our liberation history were firm believers in the doctrines we were fed by the missionaries, not only that, through what came to be called Black Theology, our master teachers also derived much of their inspiration from the Word of ‘God’ as found in the Holy Bible.

They are they are too many to mention here, but we can count among the most prominent among them, the likes of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Dr Martin Luther King, Arch Bishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Dr Cornell West. (Kindly forgive me for not naming any women, but best believe there are plenty).

Perhaps this is a sign that one has to use the best of both worlds, to not reinvent the wheel as some often say, so that we may even draw strength even from that which oppresses us in order to liberate ourselves. Garvey’s statement that ‘- Christ had in his veins the blood of all mankind and belonged to no particular race.’ Although this sounds like a direct contradiction o what is stated in the Good book itself, where Jesus’s genealogy is carefully given from Adam all the way through Israelite kings until it culminates with him being called the Second Adam, Garvey finds no problem in selling his people this idea of a non-racial savior. It was also Jesus himself who it is written to have said: ‘I have come for no one else but for the lost tribes of Israel…’

Surely there is something wrong with this picture, our great leaders have greatly erred in their judgment, but perhaps this was just to save us from the total wrath of supreme white power.

We may never get to find out, but in my view, the doctrine of Communism has had a similar effect on the thousands if not millions of non-European citizens of the world, those who have dreamt or striven for a better world, something other than the consumerist, capitalist society that pits humanity against the environment and even against ethical judgment.

The question I ask here is, to use Garvey’s terms, do we need to look at the world and ‘God through European spectacles?’ If the answer is yes, then when will we realize our own fullest potential as a people, a people with a history and ultimately a future of our own?

It is possible that the matters of oral and written history have a lot to do with how people believe. All book based religions tend to hold up their languages and text-books as sacred and sometimes even to the point of violent imposition.

Typically one would not blame the book to justify acts of aggression against nature and fellow human beings.

We as humanity are the ones who have put together these books for or own use in religious practice and the stories we have built around them have transformed through time from being allegories, to myths until certain ‘believers’ deem them true-accounts.

Here is when many of the violations of human rights begin, when people start to take myths and stories so personally that they are willing to die or kill for the preservation of the sanctity of their ideas. It would require many volumes to give some examples of this, but suffice to say that many nations are founded on principles that have a direct connection to sacred texts and we all know how many people have died for the defense of their God, their flag/banner and even their all too human prophets.

Last night I had a brief conversation with my mother; it was about the racial identity of her beloved ‘God’ Jesus the Christ. It seemed to pain her to admit that Jesus must have been a ‘sort’ of Black man. When I mentioned that there is Biblical evidence that Jerusalem and most of the Middle East was populated by people of African origin, it was not easy for her to stomach. We finally agreed that Jesus and his family or nation were of some kind of Afro-Asiatic race who looked somewhat like modern day Ethiopians.

Our conversation was untypically free of arguments since it is ‘written’ in the Holy Bible that Jesus and his family were forced to live for a long time in Egypt and that they had walked or ridden donkeys there and back. But is this the same as admitting that Israel/Palestine should be considered as part of Afrika?

If Madagascar and some other Islands along the Eastern coast are considered Afrikan without a doubt, what makes it so difficult for believers to say that the so called Middle East is Afrikan, a part of this great continent?

Perhaps this will equate to admitting that God - Jehovah, Allah and Jesus - are intrinsically Afrikan too. But this would cause trouble in global understanding of the whole Abrahamic religious fraternity and consequently also have a ripple effect on the international strangle hold of white supremacy, which persists arrogantly besides the spread of secularism, democracy and even Islam.

But then again, these are all subjects that deserve their own time and serious scholarship, of which some academics and anthropologists have devoted their lives. One of those anthropologists is a lady by the name of Alice C. Linsley who has devoted much of her time and scholarship to her blog called Just Genesis - http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com where she publishes her Christian based research on the African roots of all things Biblical.

There’s even a chapter titled Just genesis: God’s African Ancestors where she posits:

“It is fitting that attention should be paid to Christ’s ancestors and to the evidence that His ancestors included Africans. It is interesting how consistently Africa is ignored when investigating the etiology of biblical practices such as circumcision and the linguistic connections between biblical words and the African languages. – Jesus Christ’s ancestors were Afro-Asiatics. They spoke Afro-Asiatic languages which include Akkadian, Babylonian,Berber, Chadic, Omotic, Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hausa, Hebrew, Kushitic, Meroitic …twelve of these language groups are spoken by populations in Africa. Christ our God spoke Aramaic, a language that shares many roots with the African languages Tigrinya, Tigre, Amharic and the older Ge’ez.  Places associated with clans and rulers in Genesis are found only in Africa – Nok (Enoch), Kano (Cain), Ham, Bor’nu (Land of Noah), Terah, and the Jebu tribe (biblical Jebusites). Elephantine, at the border between Egypt and Sudan, was known to the ancient Egyptians as Yebu, the linguistic equivalent of Jebu.”

And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg that is Just Genesis, where there is so much overwhelming evidence of African origins of the bible that I had to write to the author of this blog, questioning her how then does it make sense to disregard the original traditional faiths of Africans in order to build up such elaborate stories around the one personality cult of Jesus the Christ?

I must have written twice or thrice, but I have yet to receive an answer, perhaps the professor is overwhelmed with such questions and there are just too many people to answer, or maybe there is no answer and this whole blog is just a happy hobby that does not need such enquiries from Black Conscious fellows like myself.

Yet I see that she has found ample time to answer a lot of the questions and approving voices who appear to share her Christian zeal.

There is always a tendency to paint the world through in the canvas of the acceptable Eurocentric perception of divinity, and just like the Linsley, some will go through great lengths I order to universalize their propaganda, thus assuring us that theirs is the foundational faith that should be accepted by all mankind. But the world is not so simple and as Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it in the title of his latest book; God is not a Christian.

Afrikan people once converted to Christianity typically disassociate themselves from all forms of traditional practices, especially those that involve any relationship with their dead, who we call our ancestors/Amathongo/Abaphansi/Izinyanya.

Eurocentric and typically evangelical Christians are quick to assert that because of the saving and power-filled blood of Jesus on the cross, all rituals connecting us with our ancestors are tantamount to worshipping of evil spirits; they are basically the work of the devil.

This is really strange indeed, given the amount of work that went into specifically naming the Jesus’s ancestors in the New Testament and how many times the words, God of our forefathers (fathers, not mothers) appears in theses scriptures. But again, let us not digress too much from the main idea of our story.

Besides the fact that we know that our illustrious leaders were born and raised in Christian seminaries, we are aiming to find out what makes Middle-Eastern, North Afrikan and Eurocentric religious concepts so popular with Afrikans, especially those Blacks who rose to become our leaders in the liberation struggle.

We also are striving to connect this faithfulness to the typically anti-faith principles of the communist and socialist movement. The final aim is to arrive at a point where Black Afrikans do not require any of these doctrines to free ourselves from white supremacy and the tyranny that comes with it. Bearing in mind that some of the most vicious dictators and autocrats in the Afrikan continent have been men of faith, either Muslims or Christians, although some have concealed their beliefs under nationalist and African fundamentalist rhetoric.

This is a complex issue and goes deep beneath and beyond the racial line as there have been many honorable people of European ancestry who have dedicated their lives to the liberation of humanity from the plagues of Nazism, apartheid and modern day slavery, some of whom have been men of the cloth.

The question is have they brought us the kind of freedom that guarantees our dignity, identity and preservation as Black Afrikans, or have they acted as martyrs  to the ultimate glory of Christ the Lord?

A passage from Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like illustrates my point exactly; let the reader note that what we are reading is a quotation from the notes/journal of Aelred Stubbs C.R, which rightly forms the last chapter of this famous book and is titled Martyr of Hope: A Personal Memoir:

 “Steve died to give an unbreakable substance to the hope he had already implanted in our breasts, the hope of freedom in South Africa. That is what he lived for; in fact one can truly say that is what he lived. He was himself a living embodiment of the hope he proclaimed by word and deed. That is why I call this little personal memoir ‘Martyr of Hope’.

Martyr means witness. He was in person a witness to the hope that all men, women and children South African, the oppressed and oppressor alike, could be free. His writings attest it; the works of BCP and Zimele and above all the community at King proclaim it; his passion and death seal it. The Church of the province of South Africa, in which he was baptized and which (largely because of respect for his mother’s faith) he never repudiated, this Anglican church does not have the right at present to claim him as its martyr. ‘He was too big for the Church’, Lawrence Zulu Bishop of Zululand, remarked to me after Steve’s death. And that about sums it up!” (page 243, I Write What I like )

This really does sum up this part of our story about what seemingly is our ‘mothers’ faith; this church which tends to engulf our whole life experience, even to put words into our own mouths. Within a Christian home, it is virtually impossible to speak of God without being misunderstood as meaning Jesus Christ or his father Jehovah.

Yet this absurdity is something we have learned to live with, albeit uncomfortably, it is what our honorable mothers have to contend with since our collective conscience and the realities of our Black lives just will not allow us to simply label ourselves Christian’s.

The priest quoted above, who was a close friend of the Biko family, is typically at pains to point out that Biko did not renounce the Anglican Church.  Indeed Biko owes a lot to certain dedicated men of the cloth for even this publication of his work, yet the real Bantu Biko made sure that we all know where he stands with regard to his faith or religious sentiment as his letter to the priest in the closing chapter attests:

“If Christ had not died, there would be no question of him being ‘born anew’ (as you put it) in anybody’s heart; and therefore because the son of man is no more, we talk of him being born anew.” 

But it is these words found in the chapter titled The Church as seen by a young Layman which are more revealing about his position and indeed my own position on the issue of Black spiritual indoctrination and subjugation:

“The time has come for our own theologians to take up the cudgels of the fight by restoring a meaning and direction in the black man’s understanding of God. No nation can win a battle without faith, and if our faith in our God is spoilt by having to see Him through the eyes of the same people we are fighting against then there obviously begins to be something wrong in that relationship. Finally, I would like to remind the black ministry, and indeed all black people that God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people’s problems on earth.” – (page 65, I Write What I Like)

This is clear enough and Biko is who he is because he was able to sum up his peoples experience in just a few words, this is why he was such a danger to the wicked establishment of the republic of South Africa. There is nothing that tells us that he exuded so much love and hope because he dwelled on the teachings of the biblical prophets or that he was inspired fundamentally by the New Testament.

Like many of us he was raised by a caring Black and Christian mother whose religion he respected but did not personally recommend.

His love for his people and his zeal for the transformation of the personality of the Black person is beyond doubt.

There is also nothing to indicate that it was his reading or fraternizing with Communists that caused him to rebel against the racist system of white supremacy and warn us against liberal tendencies.

This shows that a truly human and liberated Black person does not require the edification and approval of the Abrahamic faiths in order to be acceptable in the sight of his community and his God, that is if he chooses to even believe in the existence of any such God.

It is clear also that Biko as in the case of many other Afrikan leaders was inspired to a degree by the works and words of Marcus Garvey, but then again Garvey was a rather difficult act to follow since he has also become a Post-Modern mythological figure himself, as attested by his statements quoted above, which depict him as a committed and capitalizing Negro Christian figure.

The historical complexities abound when one considers the fact that the Rastafarians depict Marcus Garvey as a prophet akin to John the Baptist, claiming he foretold the crowning of the ‘Black king’ Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, who is also a self confessed Orthodox Christian who recommended a nationalistic reading of the Bible.

Note the following factual depictions of Marcus Garvey according to the same book quoted above:

1935 – Garvey relocates to London; publishes new edition of The Tragedy of White Injustice; denounces Italian invasion of Ethiopia; opposes involvement of UNIA members in New York – based Provisional Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia because of coalition’s ties with members of Communist party.

1936 - Begins publication of series of negative editorials of Haile Selassie and his policies; presides over UNIA regional conference held in Toronto; criticizes depiction of blacks in films.

1937 - Amy Jacques Garvey joins Garvey in London with sons; Garvey accuses Haile Selassie of lack of identification with fellow blacks and of being “visionless and disloyal to his country”; organizes School of African Philosophy with eleven students; travels to eastern Caribbean; returns to England; heckled at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park for his views on Italo-Ethiopian war.

1940 – After suffering cerebral hemorrhage in January, suffers second cerebral hemorrhage and/or cardiac arrest; Garvey dies in London, 10 June; buried in St. Mary’s Roman Catholic cemetery, Bethnal Green, London.

1964 – Garvey declared Jamaica’s first national hero; his remains reinterred at Marcus Garvey Memorial, Kingston.

Reader, please note that these are factual pieces from the Chronology of the Life of Marcus Garvey, who was born in 1887 – Malcus Mosiah (“Marcus”) Garvey, Jr., at St Ann’s Bay, parish of St Ann, Jamaica, son of Malcus Mosiah Garvey, Sr., and Sarah Jane Richards.

His first published pamphlet was in 1910 was called The Struggling Mass, published in Jamaica before he travelled to Central America.

After leaving Jamaica for England, he published “The British West Indies in The Mirror of Civilization: History Making by Colonial Negroes” in Duse Mohamed Ali’s African Times and Orient Review.

I have deliberately added these details in order to show that although the Black liberators have tirelessly worked for the improvement of Afrikan lives, as indicated by Marcus Garvey’s organization – the Universal Negro Improvement Association, their lives were inextricably tied to the church, even from the cradle to the grave and even beyond.

I have already mentioned that the despite knowledge of Garvey’s view of the Rastafarian supreme God-head Haile Selassie the First, adherents of this semi-Christian way of life continue to venerate him as the prophet par excellence. Is it perhaps due to lack of similar powerful social figures within our immediate surroundings that we tend to create gods in our own image or make them to fit our preferred world view?

The answers for most of these questions are often within our reach, but we are sometimes too uncomfortable to confront them.

I have decided to do this self enquiry regarding everything from the Christian faith, the Rastafarian lifestyle and even the acceptable communist/socialist questions.

 I am very much aware of the merits and the demerits of each of these schools of thought, I also appreciate their contribution to the advancement of the causes of human development, but what has been the cost of their contributing counter-productivity?

This is a time for radical revolutions, creatively, artistically, scientifically and even spiritually, people have got to stop being spoon-fed and or as the Ethiopian film maker Haile Gerima put it – we have to stop allowing someone else to chew our own food and forcing us to swallow. He was referring to the role of the media and elitist opinion makers in shaping the behavior of people. He also explicitly urged young people to rebel against commodification, to dare to be free even from counter-progressive notions of education.

The ultimate end is to be free from lies and useless myths in order to begin our Black life on a clean slate, to rewrite ones own life and liberate the suffering Black masses without the weight of all the unnecessary religious and tricky political propaganda.

This way then do we end this chapter and literally return from heaven, refraining from unreasonable stargazing to an exploration of a better politics of Humane Liberation, to use Biko’s words, the aim is to pump new life into the empty shell that is the Black persons existence on earth. But others may say that this is ridiculous, since there are plenty examples of Black excellence, exemplary and even opulent note; undeniably so, but we aim to liberate a more significant number of Black souls from the ravages of inferiority, constant warfare and perpetual fear. Billions of Black souls universally have lived through many generations in fear of white power, the White God who subjects you to fiery hell unless your sins have been washed ‘whiter than snow’, this fear has to end.

The Biko’s, Lembede’s, W.E.B. Du Bois, the Poor Righteous Teachers, the Black theologians, Imams and the superstars of the past, present and future, all have their parts to play in the puzzle.

Chapter 2: Between A Democracy and a Hard Place

As excellent disciples of Black Consciousness and its righteous strength, it is apt that we begin this chapter with a little bit more of what Bantu Steve Biko once so eloquently sayeth, as an answer to a racist White Judge Boshoff in the ….:

“I think My Lord, in a government where democracy is allowed to work, one of the principles that are normally entrenched is a feedback system, a discussion in other words between those who formulate policy and those who must perceive, accept or reject policy. In other words there must be a system of education, political education, and this does not necessary go with literacy. I mean Africa has always governed its peoples in the form of the various chiefs, Chaka/Shaka and so on, who couldn’t write.

To which Judge Boschoff retorted:

“Yes, but the government is much more sophisticated and specialized now than in those days?”

Biko: And there are ways of explaining it to the people. People can hear, they may not be able to read and write, but they can hear and they can understand, the issues when they are put to them.” **

Here I aim to show that even though Biko was a well read and intelligent person, he still respected the placed trust in the ordinary citizens ability to perceive what’s right and wrong for him/herself leadership wise. He uses the simple example of a famous King Shaka Zulu who has only recently been hailed as one of the most brilliant strategists both in peace and war-times; there are even books on Business models, strategy and personnel management based on the wisdom of Emperor Shaka. These texts are similar to those designed like the Art of War by Sun Tsu and they are adaptable to various organizational scenarios.

It is great that certain liberal minded White people [academics, theologians and business leaders] have recognized the mental capabilities of the race that has historically been deemed inferior and thus incapable of governing itself.

Biko was brilliant at cutting through that kind of nonsense without resorting to sophisticated political speak. He debunked the many racial myths that the average Afrikaner held about Black people and since such myths still persist, even within the minds of the oppressed classes, it is a work that we must endeavor to carry on.

In the liberating work of Black Consciousness there is no room for tolerating neo-liberal and elitist tendencies, and one strives to educate oneself thoroughly not only through books, but also through the age old value laden art of Listening. We must listen to each other in order to realize true freedom, there is no liberation when there is an unchecked perpetuation of Black upper middle class elitism, this is a recipe for disaster and a clear indication that apartheid’s slow drugs are still in the freed society’s central nervous system. The ghosts of tribalism, factionalism and even the insipid disease of multi-racialism must be exorcised aggressively if we aim to create a humane and equal society of ourselves. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, the gist of this chapter is democracy, its pro’s and cons in Southern Afrika and whether there is really such a reality as a Socialist-democracy.

With that we should recall the very first quotation on the first page of our story, the one made by the Prime Minister of Switzerland:   “You cannot make a perfect law but you can make a perfectible law which can then be improved.”

Even though she was referring to laws pertaining to the best possible way of distributing health care within a socio-capitalist democracy such as hers, this statement might as well be about democracy.

In issue No 5 October 2008, of the South  African Policy Paper published by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and edited by Hennie Kotze and Cindy Lee Steenekamp and titled Democratic Consolidation in South Africa: Comparing Elite and Public Values; I recently read this, under the title; 3. General Values of the Elite And Public In South Africa:

“Understanding the value patterns of opinion leaders may provide an indication of their policy preferences and performance judgments on issues such as legalizing prostitution and euthanasia, which are (were) being debated in South Africa. Understanding the value patterns of the mass public, on the other hand reiterate the belief that government policy on ‘moral’ issues is more ‘progressive’ than the attitudes of the electorate.”

If I am reading this correctly, what this research shows is that South Afrikans tend to leave most important policy decisions to the opinion makers, the elites and the government to make. In other words, we are not exercising our democratic rights and that we tend to think that what our government thinks is more ‘progressive’ or more conducive to our well being than our own thoughts.

This shows that the general population of South  Afrika, the mainly voiceless Black masses do not value their very own opinion on important policy matters, we simply give back our rights to the State and to elites or any loud mouth that appears to be speaking on our behalf. We cannot afford to be a nation of sheep in a world that is not becoming more complex, globalized and networked. We have got to find ways to effect these networks organically and creatively rather than allow them to influence us, the influence must be cyclic and most of all, beneficial to our own civilization and immediate environment.

The research continues, and please note the numbers here:

 “In order to gauge the importance of various life domains, respondents from both the elite and public surveys were asked to indicate how important family, friends, leisure time, politics, work and religion are in their lives.

 Figure 1- measured on a five-point scale (“very important”, “rather important”, “not very important”, “not at all important” and “don’t know”) – illustrates the differences in the prioritization of values between elites and the South African population based on the scores of those who answered “very important”.

The categories are ranked in descending order based on opinion leader output.

Family is overwhelmingly important for both opinion leaders (96.7%) and the South African public (95.6%).

The second most important facet of life for both samples is work, with 82.8% of elites and 77.4% of the public respondents expressing that it is ‘very important”.

Although religion ranked the third most important life domain for both samples, the gap between the public (96.9%) and the elite (55.4%) starts to become evident.

The attitudinal divide between the South African elite and the general public is best illustrated in terms of the importance that each set of respondent’s places on politics, friends and leisure time.

While the public measure leisure time (37.1%), friends (33.9%) and politics (21.7%) with gradually less importance, the inverse is true from an elite perspective.

After family, work and religion, the elite rank politics (54.8%) as being more important to them than friends (53.8%) and leisure time (42.4%). “– (page 8, KAS Johannesburg Policy Paper No 5 October 2008)

It is clear according to this relatively recent research that, South Afrikans from different spectrums do not only think differently and act differently; they also spend the time pursuing vastly differing lifestyles. But this may be true of any country with the expected inequality of various classes, yet in in a place with such a history as Southern Afrika has, it is reveling to see that the general public spends less time on politics and more of their headspace on religion and this clearly says a lot about our priorities and it also shows that democracy is being stewarded or attended to and ultimately shaped by the elite. But does this mean that the public is really not playing its role in shaping the destiny of the country?

Perhaps in the micro economic sphere, but in the overall mass economic arena, it seems that politics is still a game that the powerful play upon the weak. But then again, this sense or appearance of weakness might just be a choice or a sign of apathy and frustration with the system and this can have various types of results.

What then do South Afrikans think of democracy and do we feel that it is all that we hoped it would be post 1994?

Let us hear what the research from this Policy Paper says:

“The levels of support for democracy in South Africa are extremely high among the elite and this is seen not only in their support for democratic principles but also in their strong refutation of any other type of political system. An overwhelming 98.4% think it is god to have a democratic political system, while fractionally more (98.7%) feel having strong opposition parties – a critical component of a democratic system – is a good way of governing the country.” (p.12)

It is interesting to note that  a far smaller percentage of  -“ parliamentarians (26.0%), the media (21.6%) and civil servants (17.0%) feel it is either very or fairly good for experts to make the country’s decisions, as opposed to the government. (Who are these supposed experts?)

The levels of support for democracy among the ANC and DA supporters within the elite are interesting (the ‘very good’ and ‘fairly good’ categories were combined to create a ‘good’ category.”):

Of those elite who indicated that it was good to have a leader who does not bother with parliament or elections, 13.9% support the ANC and 17.9% support the DA.

More DA supporters among the elite (46.3%) believe that experts and not government should make the country’s important decisions. compared to 18.6% of ANC supporters who agree.

Half the elite who thought it would be good to have the army rule (1%) are ANC supporters.

All (100%) DA supporters and 98% of ANC supporters among the elite agree that democracy is a good form of government.

Although support for democracy among the general South African population is also high, there is a considerable difference between the attitudes of the public and elite in this regard. However, public opinion regarding having a democratic political system has increased slightly since 2001, when 83.8% of respondents indicated it was very (44.5%) or fairly (39.3%) good.

Respondents from both surveys were also asked to indicate to what extent they agree or disagree with the statement that although democracy has many shortcomings, it is still better than any other political system. Here again, the elites tended to agree overwhelmingly much more than the general public.

So what does this tell us about South Afrikans knowledge and or acceptance of the democratic system and its accompanying institutions?

Even with the above percentage indications, it is not easy to answer these questions, since South Afrikans have not experience theocracy, socialism or communism as a political system; all we have to compare democracy to is the morally bankrupt apartheid system.

Thus I equate democracy to the subtle hegemony of Christian dogma or even the overwhelming power of the Abrahamic religions.

The institutionalization of divine fear, divine love and divine retribution has been instilled in us to a point where it is difficult to use our free-will. We exist in a world of spiritual shock and awe and true knowledge is avoided or distorted by the powerful.

We were born into this and thus we now have not experienced what it would be like to practice anything different. A case in point is that during this research, the respondents were provided with a list of characteristics of democracy and asked how essential each is as a characteristic of democracy.

Why were they not also questioned on the distinguishing traits of say, socialism or theocracy or even anarchy? It seems that we are being spoon-fed this democracy, a system that comes from above and is beyond reasonable questioning.The fact that it – democracy - is admittedly not perfect only compounds the problem and just like Christianity, allows the perpetrators to make costly blunders and deliberate crimes and still be forgiven. But what about the damage caused to millions of lives?

There is no indication of who the so called experts who would influence or make policies are, for all I care it could be the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations or various business conglomerates that already run the global South at the expense of black, poor and landless people.

Could this be the same kind of democracy that Biko meant when he was answering Judge Boshoff’s questions? I doubt it very much, and I propose that in our next essay, we deal with the various types of political systems so that we may freely choose one that befits the majority of people and not just the elite. It may be a Socialist-Democracy, Communalism, a Resource Based Economy or a Meritocracy, but if we are to trust our elders, let it be anything but communism, or an elitist democracy. After the revolution, time will tell!!!