FOREWORD TO THE SITE
FOREWORD
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah insists that African ‘tradition’ must form the basis for the generation of the homogeneous African Personality. The crystallization process unfolds under our very eyes.
Revolutionary Pan-Africanism cannot but project an ethnographic re-demarcation of Africa for a liberated and unified continent under the socialist People’s Republican State of Africa. The need for re-demarcation to reverse the arbitrary imperialist balkanization of African society in 1884/5 at the Berlin Conference requires a scientific study of the cultural and linguistic map of ethnographic Africa. It is intended that, as a Department of the Centre for Consciencist Studies and Analyses (CENCSA), the Pan-African Pictorial Museum pictorially and by text explains the reality of the ‘African Nation’ and the futility of the neo-colonial divisive concept of ’African nations’. Tracing Africa’s ethnographic map is the object of this multi-ethnic study.
The result of this effort is an ethnographic map of Africa that portrays cultural and linguistic Africa as one unit whereby ethnic cultures and languages weave into each other. This is such that from the geographical centre of each ethnic group the group’s culture and language taper and weave smoothly, at all ends of and through its dialects that weave together, into the languages and cultures of the adjacent ethnic groups to form a cultural and linguistic mat. That mat exhibits a spirit of oneness among Africans in thought and practice. This Spirit of Africa portrays the African as a historically-determined person with a Dual Identity. The African either exhibits a Westernized-cum-African Personality or Arabized-cum-African Personality. That identity is enriched by Africa’s multi-raciality – Black Africans, the Berber, Arab Africans, Boer Africans (Afrikaner), Indian Africans and Mixed-Race Africans.
The Spirit of Africa is currently a troubled Spirit. As a dynamic Spirit it is in transition. It seeks to redefine itself from its lost homogeneity through its newfound heterogeneity into a new but a more complex homogeneity – the new homogeneous African Personality. It is a Spirit defined first by resilient and dynamic primary (so-called traditional) African culture and language. These dynamic components of that Spirit represent the continual primary usages of the Black African and the Berber both of whom have lived on the continent for several millennia. The more recent usages of European, Indian and Arab origins constitute a secondary wave of usages that present a heterogeneous scene of thoughts and practices. Consequently, today’s African emerges as a multi-cultural being – upholding varied cultural and linguistic acts and practices.
A sick African might first be taken to the village herbalist or priest who applies primary usages of healing. When this fails to achieve recovery the patient is then taken to a Christian pastor or bishop for prayer healing. Another failure here finds that patient taken to a malam to administer Islamic ‘rites’ for the required healing. The final destination, after yet another failure here, might be the Western medicine-based practitioner. The process might begin from the Western medical practitioner through the malam and pastor to the herbalist. Or it might begin with the malam and pastor through the medical practitioner to the herbalist. It all depends on where one chooses to begin from. The issue here is that the African believes in and makes use of these varied practices.
On another level, a funeral for an African might display a mix of primary and secondary usages whatever the socio-political class of the deceased. Just in the same way, a grand festival, which originates from primary cultural practices, might begin with an opening ceremony at the Great Shrine and end with a closing ceremony led by the bishop under the Cross of Jesus. The great Ngmayem festival of the Klo (Krobo) and the Asafotufiami of the Ada, respectively in the Dangbe area of Ghana, are an instance of such festivals. Attended by the crème de la crème of the most educated personalities of the neo-colonial state and society these festivals represent an instance of the Spirit of Africa. This is a pervasive African scene from South to North Africa.
In effect, the Spirit of Africa aggregates the varied thoughts and practices of the different ethnic and racial groupings on the African continent; which thoughts and practices are peculiarly given birth to and/or shaped or reshaped in the cauldron of African civilization and development. That Spirit it is that defines the African Nation or the African or Africanness or Africanity. In defining the African, therefore, we are minded to take into account not just the thoughts and practices of a people but also the specific geographical space identified with those thoughts and practices. Hence, a definition of the African without the organic centrality of the African continent in such definition denies the African of their geographical locus and, therefore, materiality or source of existence.
The African, wherever they might be, has their umbilical cord firmly tied to Africa. It is in this respect that the Diasporan African cannot be denied their Africanity and as a part of the African Nation. This does not run blind to the possibility and spate of denationalizations. Whereas it is impossible for a Diasporan African to deny their historical origin in Africa they can and do adopt other nationalities. By definition, this means their partial renunciation of African nationality by way of their absorption into the thought and practice system of some other nation on some other land. This absorption must be differentiated from citizenship acquisition. An African citizen in some other land remains an African national. These explain how newly-arrived races Africanize.
The Klo (Krobo) in Ghana have an intricate system of Klo identity within the Dangbe ethnic group. The notion of a true or pure Klo exhibits a complex system of absorption of other ethnic persons into the Klo segment of the Dangbe people. From slaves through refugees to married persons the Klo confer Klo identity on biologically, geographically as well as culturally and linguistically different people. The absorption process consciously avoids cosmopolitanization – the Dangme language and culture are insisted on. This does not avoid the influence of the newly-absorbed on the thought and practice system of the Klo. So that in the final analysis the Klo politico-cultural and linguistic system displays as a cultural and linguistic mat more or less with Akan culture and language.
Similar processes are identifiable among Africans across the continent. The important focus here is on the availability of absorption processes on the continent among Africans. Ultimately, these processes are propelled by the economic exigencies of the people. Among the Klo it is the need of the emergent feudal aristocracy for labour on oil palm plantations on lands acquired from the Akan that set the process in motion in the second half of the 19th century. This is not to suggest that feudal demands initiated or inaugurated the absorption process. For, it had been in existence during the preceding rule of what has been likened to a theocracy on the Kloyo (the Krobo Mountain). The legend of Konor Odonkor Azu and the white dwarfs illustrates its application.
According to the legend, which the late Elder Stephen Nanor Mate-Kole narrated to us, the first Paramount Chief of the Manya Klo, Nene Odonkor Azu, worshipped black dwarfs. He had heard of white dwarfs but had never seen any nor seen a white man. When a hunter returned to his palace with the first white Christian Missionaries whom he had captured during his hunting expedition the Konor mistook them for the white dwarfs. He welcomed them as friends of his black dwarfs. When the missionaries asked for a piece of land to build their church on, he gave it to them beside the shrine of their ‘friends’. This started a great friendship that initiated the process of absorbing Christian thought and practice into Klo society. The Church and Shrine still co-exist in close proximity. Today Klo culture is an amalgam of cultures.
So is it being said of other African cultures with their processes of absorption. Hence, just as the average person is a derivative of the collective of persons so African Culture evolves from and represents a derivative of cultures in Africa. These cultures and their languages, as expressions of the Spirit of Africa in their geographical specificity, point to the African Nation. From the multi-expressions of the Spirit of Africa is born the derivative of the African Nation. This Nation has not only been confronted with common external acts of aggression to incorporate it into other nations but has as well faced this antagonism with various degrees of collective and successful resistance. Its enemy still remains capitalism, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Dedicated to the ultimate defeat of that enemy, Revolutionary Pan-Africanism, under the inspiration of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba as well as Felix Moumie and others, projects the task of the liberation and unification of the continent under the People’s Republican State of Africa as one of completing historical processes initiated, before the European disruptive intervention, for a socialist Africa in replacement of feudal and neo-colonial institutions and practices. In this spirit, Revolutionary Pan-Africanism, as a movement, plants itself in the mass of the oppressed, suppressed and exploited people of Africa and the Diaspora for the politico-military execution of that task. To this end, African patriots are dedicated to a life of service, suffering and sacrifice.
Forward ever! Onward to victory!
Amandla! Ngawethu!