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WORLD HISTORY LINKS
blackedoutthroughwhitewashp2 Muslim Scientists and Islamic Civilization
African History on the Internet - Kingdoms and Ancient Civilizations
Correcting_Rewritten_History MindStation X : Renaissance
Italy - Italian Renaissance - Zoological studies Re: For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix
KAM Africans in Early Europe The TRUE Black History Home Page
European Crusades, Christianisation, and Colonisation West Africa
William Greaves: Documenting The Truth In Film - Global Black News ...
African Contributions to World History Sephardim and their History The Iberian Golden Age, European Expansion
Origins of Islamic Intolerence by Mark Silverberg African American and Ancient Egyptians
ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY ROME The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy - Chapter II
Great Homepage of Alexander, or Something Like That Alexander The Great - Links
Alexander the Great on the Web Alexander the Great History Project Alexander was Great
The Third Great Race War: The Moors Invade Europe History Timelines on the Web ... The History Beat
Information and facts about Cleopatra History of Alexandria: Cleopatra
Queen Cleopatra - Last Pharaoh of Egypt - Queen Cleopatra VII Raising the lost city of Cleopatra
The House of Ptolemy: Caesar, Cleopatra, & Marcus Antonius THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND
The Moors in Europe Moor Info Latin American Muslim Unity: History of Islam in Latin America
Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Table of Contents
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers Adolf Hitler and The Holocaust Hitler Was Not An Atheist
WAS HITLER A ROTHSCHILD | The controversy of the occult reich IS AMERICA
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER Hitler's Christianity African Timelines Part II
The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives
Hitler's Rise to Power The OMEGA File : HITLER ESCAPED Henry the Navigator
Dr Edward Scobie: African Presence in Early Britian: Dominica political figure
The African Presence in the Americas many centuries before Columbus
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004
The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan Doyle 1
A HISTORY OF THE WORLD - NI 196 - Carving up the world
History 386: The Military and War in America--Lecture Outlines
THE MIND THINKING OF HITLER Hitler's Religious Beliefs and Fanaticism
Arcanacon 1800's: 1800s timeline
Multiculti http://www.harunyahya.com/fascism3.php
The Future Of African Gods: The Clash Of Civilizations
WHO ARE THE REAL LATINOS OR SO CALLED LATIN PEOPLE
FROM THE WEBSITE WWW.MEXICA-MOVEMENT.ORG
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"Latino" denies us our true Nican Tlaca (Indigenous) identity and heritage. It keeps us slaves to European interests and Spaniard culture. Collectively, we have no Latin genealogy, Latin blood group, Latin history, or a common Latin culture of food or mythology. The "Latino" labeling of our people is a colonialist-racist act of Genocide---an attempt to "kill off" our people's true identity, history, independence, and our rights to our land and its wealth. Notice how this is not about "Latino Americans" in the U.S. This is about all of the "Spanish speaker" European Spaniards and their colonies of Nican Tlaca and Africans in the "Americas". What they are in fact doing is separating us from our Anahuac Heritage (Mexican and "Central American" Nican Tlaca identity and history) and enslaving us to their needs. THE CONCEPT OF HISPANIC is even more racist than "Latino" because it completely denies us our true Nican Tlaca heritage by not even referring to our colonized condition of being in "Latin America". We now become direct possessions of Spaniards. This is an attempt (successful so far) to actively reactivate the Spanish colonial empire through their colonials on our land. The media is their main tool in this parasitic renewed colonialist machine of the European Spaniards.
A side note: A
Mixed-blood is not a Criollo or a European.
Spaniards, Europeans, And
Their Squatter Descendants On Our Land Who Force Their Eurocentric,
Racist, & Anti-Indigenous "Hispanic" & "Latino" Labels On Our
People!
APOCALYPTO!! |
From: | Alaman5375 |
NEFERTITI
QUEEN OF KEMET (Ancient Egypt the land of the Blacks)
It is believe by some historians that Nefertiti was the daughter of Aye and Tiy, while other claims her as the oldest daughter of Amenhotep III. Nefertiti was married to Akhenaten the originated of the one god concept(monotheism) as it became known today. During the early life of Nefertiti she lived in a Kemet where a new model of human nature in relation to god was emerging. This belief considered man primarily has a material entity, whose happiness was measured by his ability to acquire and maintain a material heaven(wealth and pleasure). In this material heaven women were not principals that predicted or participated in social policy, but were objects of sensuality or objects to be used by men. As weaker members of this paradise women could not be participants in its building. This belief was completely contrary to the beliefs of the ancients and the principles of Ma'at. Akhenaten developed another model. The nature of his new religion was that Aton represented by the Sun was the sole god and creator of all life.
Nefertiti could not relegate herself to the traditional role of
subservient-
NEVER FORGET WHAT HAPPEN
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/angkor.html
THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
T R A V E L N O T E S
THE MIGHTY MONUMENTS OF ANGKOR
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI*
DEDICATED TO DR. ALICE WINDOM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"For the complexion of men, they consider black the most beautiful. In all
the kingdoms of the southern region, it is the same."
--Early Chinese Chronicler
On December 7, 1999 I returned to San Antonio, Texas from a two-week
educational tour to Thailand and Cambodia. It was my second trip to Thailand
and my first trip ever to Cambodia. Indeed, until 1999 I never really
thought that I would have a chance to go to Cambodia, and so my trip there
was something of a dream come true.
Quite naturally the trip was a search for African people. I am particularly
interested in African migrations. We know now, for example, that the first
humanity emerged from Africa and that streams of African people have
continued to flow across the world from ancient to modern times. It is
therefore very important for us to address the questions of exactly where
did those Africans go, what did they do when they got there and what has
subsequently happened to them. I consider such an approach Pan-African in
its nature, African-centered in character and an earnest attempt to reunite
a family of people separated far too long.
THE KHMERS OF ANGKOR
The most prominent and enduring kingdom of early Southeast Asia was Angkor
(ca. 800-1431), located primarily in Cambodia. The builders of Angkor were
an Africoid people known as Khmers--a name that loudly recalls ancient Kmt (pharaonic
Egypt). Noted Harvard anthropologist Roland Burrage Dixon wrote that the
Khmers were physically "marked by distinctly short stature, dark skin, curly
or even frizzy hair, broad noses and thick Negroid lips." In remote
antiquity the Khmers established themselves throughout a vast
area that encompassed portions of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia,
Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos.
The Khmers of Angkor were sophisticated agriculturalists, aggressive
merchants and intrepid warriors. They created a splendid irrigation system
with some canals as long as forty miles. They engaged in extensive and
ongoing commerce with India and China. For purposes of war they had machines
designed to hurl heavy arrows and sharp spears at their enemies, and rode
into battle atop ornately decorated elephants.
In the Khmer language, Angkor means "the city" or "the capital." In 889 king
Yasovarman I constructed his capital on the current site of Angkor, and over
the centuries consecutive Hindu and Buddhist Khmer kings augmented the city
with their own distinct contributions. Angkor eventually covered an expanse
of 77 square miles and was designed to be completely self-sufficient. The
Khmers were magnificent builders in stone, and for more than six hundred
years, successive Khmer dynasties commissioned the construction of
stupendous temple islands, marvelous artificial lakes and incomparable
temple mountains, including Angkor Wat--the crown jewel of Angkor, estimated
to contain as much stone as the Dynasty IV pyramid of king Khafre in Old
Kingdom Kmt.
ANGKOR WAT
My first full day in Cambodia began with a morning tour of the regal Angkor
Wat temple. The temple of Angkor Wat, the most famous of Khmer stone
structures, is truly magnificent to gaze upon and took a grand total of 37
years to build. During this period the millions of tons of sandstone used in
the temple's construction were transported to the site by river raft from a
quarry at Mount Kulen, 25 miles to the
northeast. Angkor Wat rises in three successive stages up to five central
towers that represent the peaks of Mount Meru--the cosmic or world mountain
that lies at the center of the universe in Hindu mythology and considered
the celestial residence of the Hindu pantheon. The towers of Angkor Wat, the
tallest of which rises about 200 feet above the surrounding flatlands, are
Cambodia's national symbol. The temple's outer walls represent the mountains
at the edge of the world, while the moat surrounding the temple represents
the oceans beyond.
The Angkor Wat temple dates from the twelfth century reign of Suryavarman II
(1113-1150). This was a time when the Khmer dominion over Southeast Asia was
at its very pinnacle, with an empire known as Kambuja "stretching from the
South China Sea to modern Thailand, as far north as the uplands of Laos and
as far south as the Malay Peninsula. King Suryavarman II built it as a
funerary temple for himself, and dedicated it to the Hindu god Vishnu, whom
the king represented on Earth and with whom he integrated on his death."
Angkor Wat is decorated throughout with intricate bas-reliefs depicting
stories from the epic Hindu poems, the Mahabrarata and the Ramayana, with
marching armies, fantastic demons and vivid and sensual depictions of the
celestial female dancers of the Khmers known as "apsaras." French architect
and archaeologist Henri Parmentier gave his opinion of the apsaras of Angkor
Wat in 1923 when he said that "to me they are Grace personified, the highest
expression of femininity ever conceived by the human mind." During the era
of Khmer rule over Cambodia a walk to the center of Angkor Wat was a
metaphorical trip of the spirit to the center of the universe.
FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO: African Presence in Early Asia, edited by Runoko
Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima
*RUNOKO RASHIDI is an historian, lecturer, research specialist and global
traveler. He is always in search of African people and is currently
organizing a major tour to Southeast Asia in April 2005. For more
information on the tour, to schedule lectures and order audio and video
tapes contact Runoko at Runoko@yahoo.com or call Runoko at 210 337-4405. And
visit Runoko's award winning web site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
GANDHI & RACISM
http://www.trinicenter.com/WorldNews/ghandi4.htm
Here you will see Gandhi's racist views towards the blacks.
SUMMARY: To understand Gandhi's role towards the blacks, one requires a
knowledge of Hinduism. Within the constraints, a few words on Hinduism will
suffice: The caste is the bedrock of Hinduism. The Hindu term for caste is
varna; which means arranging the society on a four-level hierarchy based on
the skin color: The darker-skinned relegated to the lowest level, the
lighter-skinned to the top three levels of the apartheid scale called the
Caste System. The race factor underlies the intricate workings of Hinduism,
not to mention the countless evil practices embedded within. Have no doubt,
Gandhi loved the Caste system.
Gandhi lived in South Africa for roughly twenty one years from 1893 to 1914.
In 1906, he joined the military with a rank of Sergeant-Major and actively
participated in the war against the blacks. Gandhi's racist ideas are also
evident in his writings of these periods. One should ask a question : Were
our American Black leaders including Dr. King aware of Gandhi's anti-black
activities? Painfully, we have researched the literature and the answer is,
no. For this lapse, the blame lies on the Afro-American newspapers which
portrayed Gandhi in ever glowing terms, setting the stage for
African-American leaders Howard Thurman, Sue Baily Thurman, Reverend Edward
Carroll, Benjamin E. Mays, Channing H. Tobias, and William Stuart Nelson to
visit India at different time periods to meet Gandhi in person. None of
these leaders had any deeper understanding of Hinduism, British India, or
the complexities of Gandhi's convoluted multi-layered Hindu mind. Frankly
speaking, these leaders were !
no match to Gandhi's deceit; Gandhi hoodwinked them all, and that too, with
great ease. Understanding of Hindu India with our black leaders never really
improved even considering years later in March 1959, much after Gandhi's
death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his wife, and Professor Lawrence D.
Reddick visited India and to our way of analysis, they fared no better than
their predecessors. We are certain, had Dr. King known Gandhi's anti-black
and other criminal activities, he would have distanced his civil-rights
movement away from the name of Gandhi. We recommend the following:
1. Grenier, Richard. The Gandhi Nobody Knows published in Commentary March
1983; pages 59 to 72. This is the best article on Gandhi briefly outlining
his war activities against the blacks.
2. Kapur, Sudarshan. Raising up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter
with Gandhi; Boston: Beacon Press, 1992 Excellent research book into the
perspective of distant American blacks with respect to their new hero,
Gandhi. However, this book has one major flaw: The author seems to be
unaware of Gandhi's anti-black activities in South Africa.
3. Huq, Fazlul. Gandhi: Saint or Sinner? Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya Akademy,
1992.
Superb book. Really gets into the Gandhi's anti-black ideology with a sense
of history setting intact. This book can be purchased from the International
Dalit Support Group, P.O Box 842066, Houston, Tx 77284-2066.
This book's second chapteróGandhi's Anti-African Racismóis a superb analysis
of Gandhi's anti-black thinking. We bring to you the whole chapter for your
review:
Gandhi was not a whit less racist than the white racists of South Africa.
When Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress on August 22, 1894, the no. 1
objective he declared was: "To promote concord and harmony among the Indians
and Europeans in the Colony." [Collected Works (CW)1 pp. 132-33]
He launched his Indian Opinion on June 4 1904: "The object of Indian Opinion
was to bring the European and the Indian subjects of the King Edward closer
together." (CW. IV P. 320)
What was the harm in making an effort to bring understanding among all
people, irrespective of colour, creed or religion? Did not Gandhi know that
a huge population of blacks and coloured lived there? Perhaps to Gandhi they
were less than human beings.
Addressing a public meeting in Bombay on Sept. 26 1896 (CW II p. 74), Gandhi
said:
Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted
upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw
Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a
certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in
indolence and nakedness.
In 1904, he wrote (CW. IV p. 193):
It is one thing to register natives who would not work, and whom it is very
difficult to find out if they absent themselves, but it is another thingó-and
most insultingó-to expect decent, hard-working, and respectable Indians,
whose only fault is that they work too much, to have themselves registered
and carry with them registration badges.
In its editorial on the Natal Municipal Corporation Bill, the Indian Opinion
of March 18 1905 wrote:
Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to
uncivilized races (meaning the local Africans), resident and employed within
the Borough. One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who
will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured
Indians who have become free, and for their descendants about whom the
general complaint is that they work too much? (Italic portion is added)
The Indian Opinion published an editorial on September 9 1905 under the
heading, "The relative Value of the Natives and the Indians in Natal". In it
Gandhi referred to a speech made by Rev. Dube, a most accomplished African,
who said that an African had the capacity for improvement, if only the
Colonials would look upon him as better than dirt, and give him a chance to
develop self-respect. Gandhi suggested that "A little judicious extra
taxation would do no harm; in the majority of cases it compels the native to
work for at least a few days a year." Then he added:
Now let us turn our attention to another and entirely unrepresented
communityó-the Indian. He is in striking contrast with the native. While the
native has been of little benefit to the State, it owes its prosperity
largely to the Indians. While native loafers abound on every side, that
species of humanity is almost unknown among Indians here.
Nothing could be further from the truth, that Gandhi fought against
Apartheid, which many propagandists in later years wanted people to believe.
He was all in favour of continuation of white domination and oppression of
the blacks in South Africa.
In the Government Gazette of Natal for Feb. 28 1905, a Bill was published
regulating the use of fire-arms by the natives and Asiatics. Commenting on
the Bill, the Indian Opinion of March 25 1905 stated:
In this instance of the fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly
bracketed with the natives. The British Indian does not need any such
restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the
carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the
native from arming himself. Is there a slightest vestige of justification
for so preventing the British Indian?
Here is the budding Mahatma telling the white racists how they can
perpetuate their Nazi domination over the vast majority of Africans.
In the British imperialist scheme, one important strategy was to divide and
rule. Gandhi advised Indians not to align with other political groups in
either coloured or African communities. In 1906 the coloured people in the
colonies of Good Hope, the Transvaal and the Orange River colony, addressed
a petition to the King Emperor demanding franchise rights. The petitioners
showed clearly that, in one part of South Africa, namely the Cape of Good
Hope, they had enjoyed the franchise ever since the introduction of
representative institutions.
Commenting on the petition, the Indian Opinion of March 24 1906, declaring
that "British Indians have, in order that they may never be misunderstood,
made it clear that they do not aspire to any political power," added:
It seems that the petition is being widely circulated, and signatures are
being taken of all coloured people in the three colonies named. The petition
is non-Indian in character, although British Indians, being coloured people,
are very largely affected by it. We consider that it was a wise policy on
the part of the British Indians throughout South Africa, to have kept
themselves apart and distinct from the other coloured communities in this
country.
In a statement made in 1906 to the Constitution Committee, the British
Indian Association led by Gandhi (CW. V p.335) said:
The British Indian Association has always admitted the principle of white
domination and has, therefore, no desire, on behalf of the community it
represents, for any political rights just for the sake of them.
Commenting on a court case, the Indian Opinion of June 2 1906, in its
Gujrati section, stated:
You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would
enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the
Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite
different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel
by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in
a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's
decision, only clean Indians (meaning upper caste Hindu Indians) or coloured
people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams. (Italic portion is
added)
Apartheid defended: Gandhi accepted racial segregation, not only because it
was politically expedient as his Imperial masters had already drawn such a
blueprint, it also conformed with his own attitude to the caste system. In
his own mind he fitted Apartheid into the caste system: whites in the
position of Brahmins, Indian merchants and professionals as Sudras, and all
other non-whites as Untouchables.
Though Gandhi was strongly opposed to the comingling of races, the
working-class Indians did not share his distaste. There were many areas
where Indians, Chinese, Coloured, Africans and poor whites lived together.
On February 15 1905, Gandhi wrote to Dr. Porter, the Medical Officer of
Health, Johannesburg (CW. IV p.244, and "Indian Opinion" 9 April 1904):
Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for
dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension.
Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs
from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must
confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian
population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my
countrymen.
Dr. Porter replied that it was the Indians who sub-let to Africans.
Commenting on the White League's agitation, Gandhi wrote in his Indian
Opinion of September 24 1903:
We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do, only we
believe that they would best serve these interests, which are as dear to us
as to them, by advocating the purity of all races, and not one alone. We
believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating
race.
Again, on December 24 1903, Indian Opinion stated:
The petition dwells upon `the comingling of the coloured and white races'.
May we inform the members of the Conference that so far as British Indians
are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing
which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type.
In his farewell speech at a meeting held in the house of Dr. Gool in
Capetown, which was reported in the Indian Opinion of July 1 1914, Gandhi
said:
The Indians knew perfectly well which was the dominant and governing race.
They aspired to no social equality with Europeans. They felt that the path
of their development was separate. They did not even aspire to the
franchise, or, if the aspiration exists, it was with no idea of its having a
present effect.
Gandhi joined in the orgy of Zulu slaughter when the Bambata Rebellion broke
out. It is essential to discuss the background of the Bambata Rebellion, to
place Gandhi's Nazi war crime in its proper perspective.
The Bambatta Rebellion--Background
The spiritual foundation of Nazism was the superiority of the Aryan race or
its modern version, the Anglo-Saxon race. When Disraeli was Prime Minister,
Britain enunciated a doctrine, like the Monroe Doctrine, warning other
European powers that Africa would be a British preserve, and that from the
Cape to the Limpopo, if not to Cairo, only white people would have local
political power. Successive British Governments pursued this policy.
In the 1870s, the Zulu Kingdom was by far the most powerful African State of
the Limpopo. Cetewayo, who succeeded his father in 1872, was an able and
popular ruler. He united the kingdom and built up a most efficient army. He
followed a policy of alliance with the British Colony of Natal. The Zulu
Kingdom and the Boer Republic of the Transvaal had been feuding for a long
time. The Zulus were defeated twice by the Boers, in 1838 and 1840. By 1877
Cetewayo was ready to invade the Transvaal. But the British stepped in and
annexed the Transvaal in 1877, only to prevent Cetewayo from doing it first
and becoming powerful and a challenge to white supremacy.
Some contemporary reports throw light on the relative strength of the Zulus
and their Boer enemies. Colonel A.W. Durnford wrote in a memorandum on July
5 ("The Secret History of South Africa" by Abercrombe. The Central News
Agency Ltd., Johannesburg South Africa. 1951 p.6):
About this time (April 10th) Cetewayo had massed his forces in three corps
on the borders, and would undoubtedly have swept the Transvaal, at least up
to the Vaal River if not to Pretoria itself, had the country not been taken
over by the English. In my opinion he would have cleared the country to
Pretoria.
Shepstone, the British Administrator, himself wrote concerning the reality
of the danger on Dec. 25 1877:
The Boers are still flying, and I think by this time there must be a belt of
more than a hundred miles long and thirty broad in which, with three
insignificant exceptions, there is nothing but absolute desolation. This
will give some idea of the mischief which Cetewayo's conduct has
caused.(Ibid p.7).
The above facts explode the myth that the British protected the Zulus from
the Boers.
British barbarity on Blacks: After annexing the Transvaal, Shepstone turned
his attention to destroying all the independent African states in that
region, particularly the Zulu Kingdom. Before annexation of the Transvaal,
Shepstone sided with the Zulus in their border disputes with the Transvaal.
After annexation he made a volte-face and used those disputes as excuses to
invade Zululand. The British public was told that the Zulu War was to
liberate the Zulu people from a tyrannical ruler, and South Africa from a
menace to "christianity and civilisation".
In 1879, the British invaded the Zulu Kingdom and defeated Cetawayo. Then
they started their complete subjugation. First the army was broken, thus
destroying their ability to defend themselves. The country was then split
into thirteen separate units under the nominal control of the chiefs,
salaried by the Government. The white magistrates supplanted the chiefs as
the most powerful men in their districts. Most important of all, the land
was partitioned. Before the war, Shepstone had expressed the hope that
Cetewayo's warriors would be "changed to labourers working for wages". It
makes a sad story, how this was accomplished. In 1902-4, the Land Commission
delineated a number of locations for the Zulus, and threw open the rest of
the country to white settlement. Out of a total acreage of more than 12
million acres, the Africans held some 2 million acres. They numbered, at the
lowest reckoning, over three hundred thousand. The Europeans, who were less
than 20,000, owned most of !
the best land. A large proportion of the African population was forced to
live upon land to which it had no legal claim. Where the Africans lived upon
private or crown lands, they lived there entirely upon sufferance and
without legal title. By this time, other independent African states in that
region were also destroyed by the British army. Wheresoever, they marched,
in Basutoland, Zululand or Bechuanaland, the Queen's horses and the Queen's
men were like unto a "Salvation Army" ministering to the welfare of the
colonists. The sufferers were the Africans.
Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha in South Africa (p.15):
The Boers are simple, frank and religious. They settle in the midst of
extensive farms. We can have no idea of the extent of these farms. A farm
with us means generally an acre or two, and sometimes even less. In South
Africa, a single farmer has hundreds or thousands of acres of land in his
possession. He is not anxious to put all this under cultivation at once, and
if any one argues with him he will say, `Let it lie fallow; lands which are
now fallow will be cultivated by our children'.
Also in his Indian Opinion (March 15 1913), he wrote:
General Botha has thousands of acres of land ... (there is) a big company in
Natal which has hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
Thou shalt not steal but rob.
It did not seem to occur to Gandhi how these people came into possession of
thousands of acres of land, whereas Africans were cooped in locations like
chicken in pens.
Grabbing the land was not enough: it needed manpower to cultivate that land.
The cry of the farmers was for labour. Naturally it found a favourite
response from Shepstone, whose dream it was to convert Cetewayo's warriors
into labourers for white men. His native policy was to meet the demands of
the European farmers. He agreed that Europeans could not expand or grow in
wealth unless they could draw more fully upon the reservoirs of labour in
the African reserves.
In the process of European colonisation, the swiftly expanding land-hungry
Europeans turned the bulk of the African population into a proletariat. Due
to the congestion and landlessness in the reserves, created deliberately by
the white rulers, their agricultural return was not sufficient for bare
existence. Then there were the taxes on huts, cattle and what not. On the
other hand, working for white men did not provide them with adequate
sustenance. In Natal, the sugar farmers of the coast relied upon the Indian
indentured labour, whereas the stock farmers of the interior relied
exclusively on Africans, and regarded the failure of Africans to work for
them as a criminal offence. In a report to the Chief Commissioner of Police
in 1903, the Police Inspector W.F. Fairley wrote: "With regard to crime, the
principal complaints made by Dutch farmers to patrols was of the refusal to
work on the part of the natives." (Department Reports 1903 p.67 cited
"Reluctant Rebellion" by Marks!
p.17. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970). Complaints about the shortage of
African labour were voiced in all parts of the country. The farmers were
later joined by the mining industries. The most obvious change was the
broadening of the economic base from being entirely agricultural to one in
which mining played a more and more important part. Diamond, gold, coal
became major industries, and with this development, the deeper involvement
of the big finance houses, particularly Rothschilds. So the fate of the
Africans as the source of cheap labour, and the fat dividends derived from
mining by the British ruling class, became interlinked. This still continues
in a modified form. Now it is Anglo-American corporations.
Cheap labour from India: Europeans assumed that Africans lived only to meet
their requirements of cheap labour, and as such they had no right to
establish themselves as self-sufficient and independent farmers because this
conflicted with European interests. Famines in India facilitates the
recruitment of indentured Indian labourers for white employers in the
Colonies. It was no different in relation to Africans. In a Report of the
Native Affairs Commission, (Native Affairs Commission Report 1939-40 cited
"Oxford History of South Africa" p.182. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1969) it
was admitted that "African reserves were regarded by whites as reservoirs of
labour, and congestion, landlessness and crop failure were welcomed as
stimulants to the labour supply". Similar situations among whites were
viewed as national calamities. The Government lent millions of pounds to
white farmers, gave them tax relief in times of famine, paid subsidies,
facilitated the export of their produce, !
and wrote off their debts. But what about Africans? Famine would be rampant,
crops ruined, food exhausted, thousands of Africans and their cattle would
starve to death, but the government would not raise a finger.
The whites not only stole the land from the Africans, and used them as cheap
labour, but also looked to them for revenue. They drew a relatively large
and growing income from the Africans. "The Native population of Natal",
Shepstone admitted ("Imperial Factor" by De Kieweit p.193. Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1970), "contribute to the revenue annually a sum equal, at least, to
that necessary to maintain the whole fixed establishment of the Colony for
the government of the whites as well as themselves." Taxation is a financial
measure to gather revenue to meet the expenditure of the state. But in South
Africa it was used to reduce Africans to slavery. The sole motive behind the
extra taxation imposed on Africans was to force the Africans to work on
terms dictated by the whites.
Always there was resentment against any measure which would allow the
Africans to settle in locations instead of keeping them as labourers. It was
not only the farmers' conferences, the press owned by the mining magnates
joined the outcry of the farmers to enact special laws to compel the
Africans to come out of their locations and work for the whites. The press
was in the forefront to arouse the sentiments that Africans not in European
service were necessarily living in idleness. Gandhi's Indian Opinion played
second fiddle to the white press in this respect. To Gandhi, the imposition
of taxes upon the Africans to compel them to work for the white employers
was "gentle persuasion".
By a stroke of the pen, the major part of the available land was taken away
from the Zulus and given to Europeans. Some of the dispossessed Zulus were
allotted locations and others remained on the land of European landlords on
sufferance. Bambata was one of these unfortunate chiefs. He became Chief in
1890 and he and his people were placed in private locations on very high
rents. The land was useless for any agricultural purpose. To make things
worse, the Boer farmers suspected Bambata of informing the British about
their pro-Boer activities, and naturally they tried to victimise him and his
people. But after the war, the British rulers leaned backwards and went out
of their way to kiss and hug the Boers. So Bambata was caught in a cleft
stick. By 1905 the tension between Bambata and his white landlords reached
crisis point. The Assistant Magistrate of Greytown, H. Von Gerard, wrote to
the Under Secretary of Native Affairs recommending the allocation of a
location for his pe!
ople. Gerard described how people were being oppressed and squeezed by the
landlords, what useless land it was for agricultural purposes, and how
summons after summons was being issued against people who were unable to pay
high rents. Finally he remarked ("Reluctant Rebellion" by Marks. P.201):
A most desperate state of affairs, the more so as there seems no remedy for
it....My sympathies with Bambata's people...but I see no way out of the
difficulty.
The military and civilian leaders of Natal were consciously developing a
picture as if an uprising was imminent. Not that they could foresee one, but
they wanted to foresee one because that would give them a golden opportunity
to inflict severe punishments on Zulus who, according to the colonists, were
growing insolent. They drew up a plan to deal with this imaginary uprising
swiftly, and all agreed that was the way they could save not only Natal but
North Africa from the "barbarities which only the savage mind can conceive."
(Ibid p. Xvii)
Zulu Revolt: But outside Natal, people were not so sure. Styne, President of
the Orange Free State, called it "hysteria". Smuts, Botha and Merriman
expressed concern as to whether the whites of Natal would spur a rebellion.
Some churchmen and many radical humanitarians in Natal, as well as England,
produced volumes of irrefutable evidence proving that it was a conspiracy to
goad the Zulus into rebellion and then massacre them. In this, Hariette
Colenso, the famous daughter of a famous father, Bishop Colenso, made the
most outstanding contribution. There was a cry of imminent native revolt in
the press long before active rebellion broke out.
As far back as 1902, Lieu. G.A. Mills in his report (GH18/02. Cited
"Reluctant Rebellion" p.158) to the Chief of Staff, Natal, on July 1
informed him:
Every Boer expresses the most bitter hatred of the Zulus. They all express a
wish that the Zulus would rise now while the British troops are in the
country so that they may be practically wiped out. The Boers all say that in
the event of the rising, every one of them would join the British troops in
order to have a chance of paying off old scores against the Zulus. When I
first came here, I visited farms and asked the Boers what they thought of
the advisability of keeping troops here. They all said it was most
necessary, as they were afraid of the Kaffirs and it would not be safe to
stay on their farms if the troops withdrew.... Taking everything into
consideration, I cannot help being forced to the opinion that many Boers
intend to provoke a Zulu rising if they can do so.
It was Colonel Mackenzie, the military supremo before the rebellion, who was
prophesying a native uprising and cleaning the barrels of his guns to use
the "golden opportunity" to inflict "the most drastic punishment" on leading
natives he found guilty of treason, and to "instill a proper respect for the
white man". (C.O. 179/233/12460. Dispatch 9.3.06 cited "Reluctant Rebellion"
p. 188).
On June 14, Charles Saunders, Chief Magistrate and Civil Commissioner in
Zululand (1899-1909) wrote to C.J. Hignet, the magistrate of Nqutu
("Reluctant Rebellion" p.241):
I quite agree with your conclusions as to our men trying to goad the whole
population into rebellion, and you have no idea of the difficulties we had
in Nkandha in trying to protect people one knew perfectly well were faithful
to us.
In his communication of July 10 1906 to the Prime Minister, (PM 61/15/66
Governor to PM 10.7.06) the Governor described the "sweeping actions and the
mopping-up operations as continued slaughter. Fred Graham, a permanent civil
servant in the Colonial Office, in his Minute of July 10, described it as
"massacre".
Nazism & racism: The most revealing was the long letter of July 24 1906 (CO
179/236/24787 minute 10-7-06) sent by the Anglican Archdeacon, Charles
Johnson, from St. Augustine's in Nqutu division, to the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospels in London. He was a man of the British
establishment and not known to have excessive zeal for standing up for the
rights of the Africans. He wrote (cited "Reluctant Rebellion" p. 241):
Many thinking people have been asking themselves, what are we going to do
with his teeming population? Some strong-handed men have thought the time
was ripe for solving the great question. They knew that there was a general
widespread spirit of disaffection among the natives of Natal, the Free State
and the Transvaal, but specially in Natal, and they commenced the
suppression of the rebellion in the fierce hope that the rebellion might so
spread throughout the land and engender a war of practical extermination. I
fully believe that they were imbued with the conviction that this was the
only safe way of dealing with the native question, and they are greatly
disappointed that the spirit of rebellion was not strong enough to bring
more than a moiety of the native peoples under the influence of the rifle.
Over and over again it was said, `They are only sitting on the fence, it
shall be our endeavour to bring them over'; and again, speaking of the big
chiefs, `We must endeavour t!
o bring them in if possible! Yes, they have been honest and outspoken
enoughó-the wish being father to the thoughtó-they prophesied the rebellion
would spread throughout South Africa; had they been true prophets, no doubt
the necessity of solving the native question would have been solved for this
generation at least.
John Merriman was a veteran Cape politician. He was one of those so-called
liberals who accepted Nazism as a doctrine, or in other words Anglo-Saxon
superiority, but regretted its consequent atrocities and thus fumigated
their consciences. He wrote to Goldwin Smith (Merriman papers NHo. 202,
16.9.06 cited "Reluctant Rebellion" p.246) in September 1906:
We have had a horrible business in Natal with the natives. I suppose the
whole truth will never be known, but enough comes out to make us see how
thin the crust is that keeps our christian civilisation from the
old-fashioned savageryómachine-guns and modern rifles against knobsticks and
assagais are heavy odds and do not add much to the glory of the superior
race.
In the letter of the Archdeacon the expression "practical extermination",
and in a letter of Lieutenant Mills "practically wiped out", have been used.
This was what the German Nazis wanted to do to the Jews: to exterminate
them. Does it make any difference whether the victims of racial slaughter
are Jews or blacks?
Conspiracy to massacre Blacks: Gandhi was well aware of the conspiracy to
massacre the Africans. When there was war hysteria in the colonial press,
this prophet of non-violence did not apply his mind as to how to stop such a
conflict. On the contrary, he did not want Indians to be left behind, but
wanted them to take a full part in this genocide.
In his editorial in the Indian Opinion of Nov. 18 1905, long before the
actual rebellion broke out, Gandhi complained that the Government simply did
not wish to give Indians an opportunity of showing that they were as capable
as any other community of taking their share in the defence of the colony.
He suggested that a volunteer corps should be formed from colonial-born
Indians, which would be useful in actual service.
Indentured Indians lived in conditions worse than slavery. Gandhi during his
20 years' stay in South Africa, did not raise a finger to ease their
sufferings. But he was quick to suggest using them as cannon fodder for
racists against Africans.
In his Indian Opinion in Dec. 2 1905 he referred to Law 25 of 1875 which was
specially passed to increase "the maximum strength of the volunteer force in
the colony adding thereto a force of Indian immigrant volunteer infantry".
To assure the Europeans that such Indians would only kill Africans, he
pointed out that "section 83 of the Militia Act states that no ordinary
member of the coloured contingent shall be armed with weapons of precision,
unless such contingent is called to operate against other than Europeans".
Gandhi defends massacre: Many years later, he wrote (p.233) in his
autobiography:
The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything
like the vividness that the `rebellion' did. This was no war but a man-hunt,
not only in my opinion but also in that of many Englishmen with whom I had
occasion to talk. To hear every morning reports of the soldiers' rifles
exploding like crackers in innocent hamlets, and to live in the midst of
them, was a trial.
Then to justify his participation in this massacre, he went on
(Autobiography p. 231):
I bore no grudge against the Zulus, they had harmed no Indian. I had doubts
about the `rebellion' itself, but I then believed that the British Empire
existed for the welfare of the world. A genuine sense of loyalty prevented
me from even wishing ill to the Empire. The righteness or otherwise of the
`rebellion' was therefore not likely to affect my decision.
What about the Nazi war criminals? Did they not have a genuine sense of
loyalty to Hitler and Nazism?
In Great Britain another storm of protest was raised against the atrocities
perpetrated in Natal. The only time Gandhi mentioned the Zulu suppression
was on August 4 1906, when he wrote in his Indian Opinion:
A controversy is going on in England about what the Natal Army did during
the Kaffir rebellion. The people here believe that the whites of Natal
perpetrated great atrocities on the Kaffirs. In reply to such critics, the
Star has pointed to the doings of the Imperial Army in Egypt. Those among
the Egyptian rebels who had been captured were ordered to be flogged. The
flogging was continued to the limits of the victim's endurance; it took
place in public and was watched by thousands of people. Those sentenced to
death were also hanged at the same time. While those sentenced to death were
hanging, the flogging of others was taken up. While the sentences were being
executed, the relatives of the victims cried and wept until many of them
swooned. If this is true, there is no reason why there should be such an
outcry in England against Natal outrages.
One may notice that the article was very cleverly written. First Gandhi
stated that people in England believed that the whites of Natal perpetrated
great atrocities on Africans, as if he himself did not know what happened,
and also gave the impression that it was the local Natal Army and not the
Imperial Army which was involved in the atrocities, which is not true. Even
at this stage, he was not willing to tell the simple truth, that atrocities
were committed. Then he borrowed the description of hanging and flogging in
Egypt from the Star as if he did not know about that either. Did or did not
Gandhi know that those Egyptians were not common criminals to be flogged and
hangedóthat they were the patriots, the flowers of the Egyptian nation?
If Gandhi unequivocally accepted or found out that the Imperial Army
committed those atrocities, then he could not claim that he believed the
British Empire existed for the welfare of mankind. The last and the vilest
of all was the subtle suggestion that if the Imperial Army did what they
were accused of doing, then there was no reason why there should be such an
outcry in England against the Natal outrage. Why could this
Imperialist-manufactured Mahatma not say clearly that both were crimes
against humanity?
------------------------------------------------------------
"I would rather be a member of this [Afrikan] race than a Greek in the time
of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or Anglo-Saxon in the
nineteenth century." - Edward Wilmot Blyden
"However much we may detest admitting it, the fact remains that there would
be no exploitation if people refused to obey the exploiter. But self comes
in and we hug the chains that bind us. This must cease." - Mohandas Gandhi
UHURU!
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(REVISED EXPANDED EDITION) THE GLOBAL AFRICAN
COMMUNITY TRAVEL NOTES: SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS AND THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN EARLY
ROME
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI*
DEDICATED TO DR. IVAN VAN SERTIMA
"At the time that the twelve African Christian martyrs died in A.D. 180
there were living two great African personages: Septimius Severus, who later
became Emperor of Rome; and Tertullian, one of the greatest of Church
leaders."
--J.C. DeGraft-Johnson, African Glory
Of my recent travels in Europe I suppose that it is appropriate that we
start with Rome, for it was to Rome that I flew to on the first leg of my
European journeys that began in January 2003. And so it was, that after
connecting flights from New York to London to Amsterdam to Rome's Leonardo
Da Vinci Airport, and a late night check in at the Royal Gambrinus Hotel in
the city center, I was ready to begin my tour of eternal Rome--one of the
world's most celebrated cities.
Actually I had not even planned to visit Rome at the time. I thought that I
had secured a speaking engagement in Stockholm through some African brothers
in Sweden, but when that fell through and with time in Europe on my hands,
Rome became an attractive prospective destination. And much to my delight, I
found that someone special would be looking out for me when I got there and
that was none other than Samia Nkrumah--Kwame Nkrumah's youngest daughter!
During the course of several days I really came to like sister Samia and not
only because of her father. She was described to me even before the trip not
just as "the only daughter of Kwame Nkrumah. She is a bright, young, and
very energetic political journalist, who I am sure can give you some insight
during your tour!"
Indeed, Samia turned out to be a beautiful and charming and really good
sister, and I enjoyed her company immensely. She even arranged for me to
give a slide presentation at a local bookstore and you know I liked that! So
I not only visited Rome but lectured there also! And the lecture, translated
by Samia's husband, was followed by dinner, coffee, cocktails and
conversation that lasted well into the night, Thanks so much sister Samia.
for she was a sort of African oasis in a kind of Roman desert, as I saw only
a scattering of other Africans during my visit, mostly Somalis and
Ethiopians, a handful of Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians, a few
Senegalese, one brother from Ireland and an occasional African-American
tourist.
ROMAN ANTIQUITIES
As stated earlier, the attraction that Rome had for me was her vast store of
antiquities and there was really far too much to be taken in during the
course of a week's time. But I did get to see a bunch of wonderful sites and
monuments that ranged from the Roman Coliseum to Trajan's Column, to the
Baths of Caracalla, to the City Walls, to the Imperial Forums, to the Circus
Maximus, to the Pantheon, to the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, to the obelisks
of Thutmose III and Ramses II and quite a few other places too. These were
all impressive structures and I was happy to see and photograph them but I
must say that as a whole they paled in comparison to the mighty monuments of
ancient Egypt. I also visited and glanced at, although it was heavily
scaffolded, the great Axumite obelisk taken to Rome from Ethiopia by the
Italians during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia from 1935 to 1941 and
waiting for its long overdue return to Mother Africa.
And of course I went to all of the major museums in Rome. These museums
included the Vatican Museums, the Capitolini Museum, the Etruscan Museum and
at least two national museums--the Palazzo Massimo Alle Terme and the Museo
Nazionale Romano.
The Vatican Museums have a vast collection that includes a number of
excellent Greek and Roman pieces and some exquisite pieces from ancient
Egypt, including a larger than life statue of Queen Tuya (wife of Seti I and
mother of Ramses II) of Dynasty Nineteen. The statue was originally in
Ramses II's mortuary temple (The Ramesseum) only to be taken from Egypt to
Rome by Emperor Caligula.
The Capitolini Museum, with its stunning collection of marbles and described
as the "oldest public collection of ancient artworks in the world", also has
a set of ancient Egyptian artifacts and a superb image of Diana/Artemis of
Ephesus in the form of a multi-breasted Black fertility goddess. And I must
say, giving credit where it is due, that the Romans worked wonders with
marble and probably the best representations of such works are housed in the
Capitolini Museum.
The Etruscan Museum was splendid also and I was able to wander its halls
towards the end of my trip to Rome. The Etruscans were the precursors of the
Romans in Italy and their culture reflects a considerably closer
relationship with ancient Africa than their successors. As in ancient
Egyptian art, the Etruscan men are consistently dark while the Etruscan
women are portrayed much lighter. Etruscan women seem to have enjoyed a
freedom far greater than that of later Roman women, and women and men in
general are frequently portrayed as happy and loving couples in Etruscan
art. I was hard pressed to find anything of the sort among the Romans
themselves.
There were in the museum, I believe, two or three Etruscan vases with
obviously Africoid faces depicted on them, and one of the more interesting
of the Etruscan exhibits, dated to 275 B.C.E., depicts what appears to be an
African elephant.
DISTINGUISHED AFRICANS IN EARLY ROME
I suppose that you could accurately say that African people can be found
everywhere on the planet in either ancient or modern times or both. And
certainly I had been finding information about the African presence in early
Rome for quite a while now.
Ancient African people, sometimes called Moors, are known to have had a
significant presence and influence in early Rome. African soldiers,
specifically identified as Moors, were actively recruited for Roman military
service and were stationed in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria,
Hungary, Poland and Romania. Many of these Africans rose to high rank.
Lusius Quietus, for example, was one of Rome's greatest generals and was
named by Roman Emperor Trajan (98-117 C.E.) as his successor. Quietus is
described as a "man of Moorish race and considered the ablest soldier in the
Roman army."
In addition to this background, I also knew that by the end of the second
century of the Christian Era more than one third of all of the members of
the Roman Senate were born in Africa and Africans were dominant in Rome's
intellectual life. And going all of the way back to my first reading of of
Joel Augustus Rogers' World's Great Men of Color I found out about the
African-Roman writer Publius Terentius Afer (190-159 B.C.E.). It was this
African, Terence, who penned the immortal words, "I am a man and nothing
human is alien to me."
THEOLOGIANS, MARTYRS AND SAINTS
In addition to all of the above, I also knew, regarding the African presence
in early Rome, about saints and theologians and martyrs like Tertullian,
Cyprian and Augustine. Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, for example,
was the first of the church writers to make Latin the language of
Christianity. Tertullian was born into a rich family in Carthage in 170 C.E.
He wrote Greek and Latin fluently and was "well trained in the school of
rhetoric where Apuleius (another African), had been a pupil a generation
before." Tertullian's wife was a Christian and he himself a convert. A man
of fiery temperament and evangelical spirit, Tertullian is said to have
lived to an advanced age. In 197 C.E., during the reign of Septimius Severus,
Tertullian's Apologia was published.
St. Cyprian is called the "greatest of the bishops of Carthage, the first
African martyr-bishop and the man who, more than anyone, organized the
African Church." His reputation was such that the Churches of Gaul and Spain
appealed to him as an arbiter. Like Tertullian before him, Cyprian was born
of a prosperous family in Carthage in 200 C.E. He eventually held a chair in
rhetoric at Carthage and in middle age, after reading the works of
Tertullian, he converted to Christianity. Following his conversion Cyprian
distributed most of his fortune to the poor. As an orator he was such that
only three years after becoming a Christian he was elected bishop of
Carthage. Sixty of Cyprian's letters have survived as testament to his great
intellectual gifts. On September 14, 258 C.E., St. Cyprian, after paying his
executioner twenty-five gold pieces and surrounded by a large crowd of
Christians, was beheaded.
Susan Raven, in her wonderful book Rome in Africa, refers to St. Augustine,
born in 354 C.E. in Thagaste, North Africa, as "the greatest African."
Augustine was the son of St. Monica and largely because of her desires he
converted to Christianity in 386 C.E. In 395 C.E. he became Bishop of Hippo,
North Africa. His teaching on free will, original sin and the operation of
God's grace has been in illuminated in numerous publications, particularly
in his City of God, published in 397 C.E. St. Augustine died in August 430
C.E. during the Vandal siege of Hippo.
AFRICAN POPES
There were at least three African Popes at Rome. St. Victor I became the
first known African bishop of Rome in 189 C.E. and reigned until 199 C.E.
Victor I, the first pope to write in Latin and the first pope known to have
had dealings with the imperial household, is described as "the most forceful
of the 2nd-century popes." According to the late scholar Dr. Edward Vivian
Scobie:
"Although nothing is known of the circumstances of his death he is venerated
as a martyr, and his feast is kept on July the 28th. Today, in the history
of the Roman Church he is remembered, not only for his ruling that Easter
should be celebrated on Sunday, but he has also been named in the canon of
the Ambrosian Mass, and he is said by Saint Jerome to have been the first in
Rome to celebrate the Holy Mysteries in Latin."
St. Miltiades, a Black priest from Africa, was elected the thirty-second
pope after St. Peter in 311 C.E. Under Miltiades, after the issuance of an
edict of tolerance signed by the Emperors Galerius, Licinius and
Constantine, the great persecution of the Christians came to an end and they
were allowed to practice their religion in peace. St. Miltiades is regarded
as a Christian martyr and died in early January 314 C.E.
The third of the African popes and the forty-ninth pope overall was St.
Gelasius I. He was born in Rome of African parents and governed from 492 to
496 C.E. He is described as "famous all over the world for his learning and
holiness" and "more a servant than a sovereign." He died on November 19, 496
C.E. and like St. Victor I and St. Miltiades, St. Gelasius I was canonized.
As a Saint, his Feast-day is held on the 21st of November. Again, according
to Dr. Scobie, "St. Gelasius I has been described as Great even among the
Saints."
BLACK POWER IN ANCIENT ROME: THE SEVERAN DYNASTY
The crowning highlight of my trip to Rome was the National Roman Museum,
where all of the information that I had been reviewing for all of these
years was validated. For here, on the last day of my trip I found evidence
of an African dynasty at the very height of imperial Rome.
I had been in Rome for almost a week by then, and while it had been for the
most part a pleasant experience I had not made the major and meaningful find
that I had hoped that I would. I had seen no really Africoid images of
Hannibal Barca or any Black Madonna statues or anything like that. And then
it happened. Walking methodically through the museum galleries I gazed into
Room XIII and there it was! Even at a glance I thought that one bust, in
particular, looked strikingly Africoid. I looked closer and read the caption
on the bust. It read Alexander Severus. I was familiar with that name--Severus.
And then I turned around and saw a marvelous bust of Septimius Severus. And
then I saw busts and statues of Septimius' two sons--Geta and Caracalla and
they all looked Africoid too, some more so than others. I had stumbled (or
was I divinely led?) into a room that I had no prior knowledge of filled
with these images of African looking Roman emperors!
This dynasty, known to historians as the Severan Dynasty, began with the
accession to the throne of Septimius Severus in 193 C.E. In actuality,
Septimius shared the throne for two years with Pesennius Niger. Indeed,
could Pesennius Niger, another of Rome's outstanding military commanders,
himself have been an African? His name certainly indicates that possibility.
Records state that Septimius was born in Leptis Magna on the North African
coast (modern day Libya) on April 11 in either 145 or 146 C.E. And Septimius
was not just born in Africa. Numerous pictures, busts and statues of him
show him to be phenotypically Black. Here, I have to say that the
information that I was able to gather in Rome in March 2003 was further
augmented by the acquisition of a color post card of a wood panel of
Septimius Severus and his family, done around 200 C.E., that I obtained
seven months later in the Antiquities Museum in Berlin. Again, there is no
doubt that he was a Black man and the painting itself shows him as what I
would describe as somewhere between copper colored and deep burnished brown.
Young Septimius, coming from a family of Romanized Africans, received a
education rooted in Roman literature and quickly learned to speak Latin.
After his formal education was completed he adopted an official career and
became a civil magistrate. Later, he became a military commander, and this
took him to Rome where he proved himself an able and popular and conscious
military leader.
Around 199 C.E., six years after becoming emperor, Septimius even journeyed
to Egypt. Can you imagine Emperor Septimius sailing on the Nile? Consider
what he might have thought as he gazed at the pyramids and walked through
the Karnak and Luxor temples.
Around 203 C.E. Septimius had a mighty arch constructed in the Imperial
Forum. This monument is considered one of Italy's most important triumphal
arches.
He is even said to have built a marble tomb for Hannibal Barca--early Rome's
African nemesis. Indeed, because of his own African origins, Septimius has
been referred to as "Hannibal's revenge."
After a distinguished career characterized by administration reorganization,
exploits on the battlefield and the intensification of Christian
persecution, Septimius died conducting yet another military campaign, this
one in York in Britain, on February 4, 211 C.E. He was of sixty-five years
old and and had been in poor health, suffering severely from gout, for
years. His reign was seventeen years, eight months and three days and he was
the last Roman emperor to die of natural causes for almost a hundred years.
Septimius Severus was succeeded in 211 C.E. by his sons Lucius Septimius
Geta (211-212 C.E.) and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus aka Caracalla (211-217 C.E.).
These brothers are said to have constantly plotted against one another and
Caracalla finally had Geta murdered in 212 C.E. It was under Caracalla in
212 C.E. that Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of
the Empire. Caracalla was also responsible for refurbishing roads and the
construction of a triumphal arch in Algeria, as well as his already
mentioned enormous public baths. Caracalla was himself murdered by the
military in 217 C.E.
Geta and Caracalla were followed by the Mauritania born Marcus Opellius
Macrinus (217-218 C.E.), the Praetorian Prefect and the first non-senator to
become emperor. Heliogabalus (218-222 C.E.), said to be either the son or
nephew of Caracalla and a man of dubious character, followed Macrinus, and
then came Severus Alexander (222-235 C.E.), who restored the Roman Coliseum
to its ancient status and with whose thirteen year reign the era of the
Severan domination of Rome came to an end.
This line is known as the Severan Dynasty and the National Roman Museum
busts and statues and sculptures of the representatives of this dynasty
strongly testify to their African identity. They are powerful images and
like many of the statues and busts and sculptures of ancient Egypt I found
the noses missing on all of them save one of Septimius' son Caracalla. And
the face adorning the bust of Severus Alexander, the last member of the
dynasty, is even more Africoid looking than that of Septimius Severus, the
dynasty's founder.
I guess that you say that I was elated and pretty much blown away by my
discovery of the Severan Dynasty, and I was able to leave Rome on a very
high note. Actually the whole trip had been a high note, and as other
horizons beckoned me I thought of my visit to Rome as a very successful
endeavor. I felt good about having gone to Rome. I had seen a part of the
world that until recently I never had serious aspirations about seeing and
had spent an exciting week exploring what was for me a brand new city. I had
lectured there and been well received in yet another country. I had been
hosted and in part accompanied by the youngest daughter of one of our
greatest leaders ever. And I had found that a small cadre of African men had
ruled over the Roman Empire during the height of its imperial glory. Yes,
indeed, this was a most successful trip.
May 10, 2004
*Runoko Rashidi is an African historian and research specialist very much in
love with Africa. He is currently coordinating an educational tour to Peru
scheduled for November 2004. For more information go to Runoko's award
winning Global African Presence Web Site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY TRAVEL NOTES:
ON THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI*
DEDICATED TO JAMES E. BRUNSON AND WAYNE B. CHANDLER
"How do we explain such a large population of Blacks in Southern China,
powerful enough to form a kingdom of their own?"
--Chancellor James Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization
"Most of the population of modern China--one fifth of all the people living
today--owes its genetic origins to Africa."
--Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1998
2001 was one of my biggest travel years ever. It was a year that I decided
to visit some of the world's world great antiquities including those in
China, Egypt, Peru, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. China was the first leg
on the journey.
How many of us have wanted to visit China? I certainly did, and when the
opportunity availed itself in March 2001 there I went. I was already in
Hawaii anyway and I was excited about going farther. Not only was China the
center of a great and ancient civilization, it was a land with a deep
history of African contributions, and me being a man with a keen interest in
the global African presence, especially Asia, I felt that I simply had to
go.
And so it was that, buoyed by the fact that the trip had been handled by an
African travel agency (I love to recycle Black dollars), I arrived, all
alone, in Beijing on March 4, 2001. Sure enough, sisters and brothers, it
was not long after landing in China that I found myself on the "Great Wall."
It was another dream come true--I was actually standing on the Great Wall of
China. But beyond the excitement of being there, how was it really?
Actually, I was not that impressed. I suppose that I had been spoiled by
Egypt and I've come to the conclusion that after you've visited Egypt a few
times everything else pales in comparison.
Indeed, since my first trip to Egypt in 1992 I have visited India's Taj
Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri and Pink City, mighty Angkor in Cambodia, Great
Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, Bagan in Myanmar, the rock churches in Lalibela,
Ethiopia, Cusco and Machu Picchu in Peru, and a whole lot more. And these
are impressive areas indeed but nothing really matches up to the pyramids,
tombs and temples of Egypt. But at least I could say that I was there--that
I stood on the Great Wall! Good for me.
Following the Great Wall I journeyed to the Ming Tombs, which I found
interesting but not really awe inspiring. But it was during my visit to the
Ming Tombs that something happened that in many ways set the tone for the
entire trip. People started to follow me! Both men and women, but especially
young women, started following me! Finally, I just stopped in my tracks and
asked my tour guide what was going on. He told me that my followers were in
admiration of me and thought that I must be some kind of celebrity! Well,
with that explanation handed to me I quickly calmed down and went about the
important business of sight seeing. But the people continued to follow me
and it soon got to the point where folks were shaking my hand and asking to
take photographs with me. Well, worse things have happened to me and I
pretty much took it in all in stride. But a lot more was to follow on my
Chinese odyssey and not all of it was as pleasant.
And so I got through my first day in China. I had had a long trip, checked
into a fabulous hotel, climbed China's Great Wall, visited the Ming Tombs
and been mistaken for a celebrity. All in a day's work in the life of Runoko
Rashidi, fast on his way to becoming a legend in his own mind. Next day,
fresh and relaxed I went to the Forbidden City. I remember a lot of things
about that second day. First, that it was cold and windy. Second, I found
not a scrap of litter on the streets. Third, that language was going to be a
big barrier. Fourth, I never saw any women in tight and revealing clothes.
And, perhaps more than important than all of the rest, I had not seen any
Black people yet--neither depiction nor actual person! There were none in
the Forbidden City, just as there had been none on the Great Wall or in the
Ming Tombs. So much for antiquity. And then it suddenly dawned on me that I
hadn't seen any in the hotel or in the restaurants or in the streets or
anywhere.
What was going on here? Trust me when I say that a brother was starting to
feel a little lonely.
Next day I visited the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple. I was impressed
with both places. And this was followed the next day with a trip to the Reed
Moat Bridge, the Summer Palace and Tianamen Square. I went to different
restaurants every day and the food was great. So far, pretty good. But
still, no Black folks! What could have happened to them I wondered? Wasn't
this the place where Chancellor Williams said that we were once powerful
enough to build a kingdom of our own? And didn't my brothers James E.
Brunson and Wayne B. Chandler document the existence of Black people here?
Hadn't Clyde Ahmed Winters done some pioneering work on the subject? And
hadn't Rev. James Marmaduke Boddy written about the African presence in
ancient China way back in 1905? And what about that 1998 DNA study that
concluded that most of the people of modern China had African genetic
origins? What was going on here? I was starting to feel confused.
Next day I took an excursion about 128 kilometers out of Beijing to visit
the East Qing Tombs. I thought that if I couldn't find Black people in
Beijing itself that I might have better luck elsewhere. The tombs were
splendid and it was well worth the journey, although I still had not found
what I was looking for. On the other hand, the people that I met that day
were said to be peasants of Manchu stock and they weren't friendly at all.
Indeed, for the first time on the trip I met folks who actually seemed cold
and even a little hostile. I didn't like it. When I asked my tour guides
what the local people were saying about me they just shrugged and requested
that I not worry about it. I liked it even less.
Well, I guess that you could say that by this time I had seen about enough
of Beijing and the surrounding areas and it was more than time to go. And so
away I went to city of Xi'an. You know the city--the one with the terra
cotta soldiers. I didn't see the soldiers that day but I did make a long
anticipated visit to the the Shaanxi Provincial Museum of History--said to
be China's best museum. What a disappointment! Not a sister or
brother--ancient or modern--in the place. Damn!
And then I went to the Tang Dynasty Museum. The Tang Dynasty represents one
of the great high points in Chinese history. But there was nothing that I
could say was distinctly Africoid in the Tang Museum! They even brought the
Museum Director himself out to meet me. I was told that it was his official
day off but when he heard that I was coming he showed up anyhow. He told me
that he was honored to meet me and that I was the first Black man to ever
visit the place. But when I asked him about African people in the history of
China I drew a complete blank. He claimed that he knew nothing about such a
possibility. At least he was consistent.
Of my three guides, all of whom professed great stores of knowledge
regarding early China, I could jar nothing loose from them regarding an
ancient African presence. At the same time, however, they all knew about the
anti-African riots that took place in China in the mid-1980s. I was
beginning to wonder if all of this, I mean the whole experience, was a kind
of dream or something.
The following day was my best in China! I went to the Banpo Neolithic
Village and drove past the the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, and finally
got to the museum of terra cotta soldiers and horses. They were magnificent
and represent another high point in Chinese history, and I was impressed by
the fact that both the tomb and soldiers and horses belonged to the same man
who began construction of the Great Wall, and thought that closest
comparison that I could make was to the great pyramid builders of Old
Kingdom Egypt.
For lunch that day in Xi'an I went to another great restaurant followed by a
visit to an actual Chinese tea house. This time all of the waitresses paused
in their attention to the needs of the other diners to give me a peep and
even the chef came out of the kitchen to take a look. And, oh yes, by this
time I can seen a couple of African-American tourists and what appeared to
be an African diplomat and one of them actually talked to me! Wow!
The next two days I saw the Xi'an city walls, a Han tomb complex, a drum
tower and another museum. And I noticed a few other things too. It seemed
that the Chinese, in general, smoked like chimneys, that they were highly
disciplined, that there were lots of unemployed laborers, that there was a
great deal of industrial pollution and the skies always seemed hazy, that
there were many things to buy with aggressive vendors at every site, and
that the people as a whole seemed very proud to be Chinese.
Well sisters and brothers, my trip to China was coming to an end and I
suppose that it was just as well. I was glad that I went but I had found no
documentation of the African presence and had spent quite a lot of money in
my search. I suppose that I should have been better prepared but based on
all the work that had gone into my African Presence in Early Asia anthology
I really thought that it would have been a simple process with the African
imprint everywhere. It turned out to be far from the case. Even the
artifacts that I saw dating from the Shang Dynasty period did not seem
Africoid. At least they didn't to me.
And so, rather downcast, I returned to Beijing for one more night before an
early morning flight back to the United States. Settling down in Beijing's
Mandarin Hotel I got a fabulous suite and then went out in search of what I
hoped would be a really special meal before I departed the People's Republic
of China. But it did not turn out that way. As a matter of fact, I never did
get to eat that evening. The first two restaurants that I went to were in
the hotel itself. In the first one I waited about thirty minutes for service
and never having received any I simply got up and walked out. In the second
hotel restaurant I felt distinctly unwelcome. I don't believe in spending
money where I don't feel comfortable and so I soon left that place too. And
then I walked around the block thinking that I would have more success
outside of the hotel. But the result was just more of the same. At one
restaurant that I stopped at I was quickly ushered in with a smile and what
appeared to
be words of welcome. But then all of a sudden all of the waitresses started
to giggle and laugh and I soon got the heck out of there too.
Sisters and brothers, I was livid! I not only let the front desk at the
Mandarin Hotel have it at what I considered my overall rude treatment at the
hands of the Chinese but I had plenty of venom left for my tour guides the
next morning too. All they could do was tell me how sorry they were and
rather lamely explain that the local people were just not used to seeing
Black folks. And so I blasted them some more.
So I guess that you could say that my trip to China was a kind of bitter
sweet affair. I am glad that I had gone because there is nothing like seeing
it for yourself. And many of the monuments that I saw there were indeed
impressive. But I left China thinking that I would never go there again and
I could not help wondering again and again about what happened to all of the
Black people in China.
*Runoko Rashidi is a historian and world traveler engaged in a life long
love affair with Africa. He is very active Online and is the editor, with
Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, of the African Presence in Early Asia. Runoko is
currently coordinating an educational-cultural tour to Peru in November 2004
entitled "Looking at Peru through African Eyes."
For information on the tour and/or to follow Runoko's doings please visit
his award winning Global African Presence Web Site at
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY TRAVEL
NOTES:
PERU THROUGH AFRICAN EYES--A BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY
BY RUNOKO RASHIDI*
DEDICATED TO THE IMMORTAL SPIRIT OF FRANCISCO CONGO
As I am now a few days between international trips I thought that it
might be a good idea to take the time to write another travel note. And
since I will taking my first tour group to Peru come November 2004 this
seems like the perfect opportunity for me to post a brief summary of my 2001
trip there. Believe it or not, there is an African presence in Peru. Indeed,
unlike some travelers and scholars, I would contend that, with the exception
of Brazil, the African presence in Latin America is not invisible, it simply
has not been sufficiently explored and documented.
As a bit of background, I can tell you that I first remember becoming aware
of the African presence in Peru about twenty years ago. I was watching a
weight lifting competition during the Olympic Games when I noticed a Black
man on the Peruvian team. My first reaction was, Wow! We really are
everywhere!
But the big revelation came in July 1999 as a participant and keynote
speaker at the Second International Reunion of the African Family in Latin
America. This was a truly historic gathering and was held in the Maroon
community of San Jose de Barlovento, Venezuela. The theme of the Reunion was
"People with an Ancient Past Working in the Present for a Glorious Future."
The Reunion was sponsored by Afro America XXI and lasted for a week. It was
both one of the greatest events that I have ever participated in and one of
my finest hours. All of the forums were wonderful and while doing the
presentations I was in top form. During the height of the Conference I did
keynote presentations on three consecutive nights. The first presentation
was on the "African Presence in America before Columbus." The second was on
"Ancient African Empires." And the third and biggest of them all was
entitled, "Unexpected Faces in Unexpected Places: The Global African
Presence." I will never forget how after the last presentation the various
national delegations lined up to shake my hand and have take their
photographs taken with me. And then the very last delegate and the oldest
person in attendance, a small Black woman from Jamaica, walked up with great
dignity and embraced me and told how proud "your mother is of you." We were
both overcome with emotion and I confess that I cried for a long time that
night.
This Reunion brought together African people from as far away as Ethiopia
but the vast majority of the attendees were Africans from the Western
Hemisphere. Indeed, from North America came African people from Canada, the
United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. From Central America came Africans
from Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. And from South
America itself emerged sisters and brothers from Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil,
Guyana, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Columbia and the host nation
Venezuela, and Peru.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Reunion was the revelation that
many of these sisters and brothers seemed completely unaware that African
people lived in the neighboring countries. And this was the first time that
I met African people from Peru.
With this background in mind, for ten days in June 2001 I toured Peru and
found it to be a fascinating place. I had already been to Brazil, Venezuela
and Guyana but I was hungry for more and Peru was my first destination on
South America's western side. To begin with, the museums were excellent and
I was astounded by the Africoid features of many of the Moche portrait
vases. And the churches and cathedrals weren't bad either. First of all,
there were a lot of them and I was especially impressed with the Church and
Monastery of Santo Domingo with its life-sized statue of the black St.
Martin de Porres. And who could ever forget the sacred Urubamba Valley and
the mysterious city of Machu Picchu? And equally impressive, perhaps even
more so, were the ceremonial centers of Sacsayhuaman and the ancient urban
complex of Ollantaytambo.
THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN ANCIENT PERU
Contrary to popular belief, the first Africans to come to Peru did not come
as captives, that is enslaved people. Rather, the country that is now called
Peru in all likelihood became home to many of the first waves of Blacks who
crossed into the Western Hemipshere tens of thousands of years ago. We have
already found the bones of these ancient Blacks in Bolivia, Ecuador and
Brazil. Why would Peru be an exception? And then there is the Moche
civilization.
Peru is probably the most archaeologically rich country in South America and
one of the most important phases of its history is the Moche period. The
Moche (or Mochica), a militaristic people little known to all but a few of
us, erected their empire along the Peruvian coast around 100 C.E. and were
not eclipsed for seven hundred years. They built their capital in the middle
of the desert around what is now the city of Trujillo. It featured the
enormous pyramid temples of the Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna (The
temples of the Sun and the Moon). The Temple of the Sun, one of the most
impressive adobe structures ever built in the Western Hemisphere, was
composed of over a hundred million mud bricks.
The Moche roads and system of way stations are thought to have been an early
inspiration for the Inca network. The Moche increased the coastal population
with extensive irrigation projects and skillful engineering works were
carried out, such as the La Cumbre canal, still in use today, and the Ascope
aqueduct, both on the Chicama River.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Moche was their art, especially
their amazingly life like portrait vases. In June 2001 I managed to view a
number of these Moche pieces in the Lima museums, many of them so Africoid
that I thought that they could have easily been manufactured in the Congo. I
am talking here about vase after vase after vase. Indeed, based on this
artistic evidence alone one could say that the Moche are among ancient
America's best kept secrets.
AFRICANS IN COLONIAL PERU
Although some Africans came to Peru with the Spanish invaders as soldiers
and translators, beginning in the sixteenth century significant numbers of
enslaved Africans were being taken to Peru. During the 1550s there were an
estimated three thousand enslaved Africans in Peru, about half of them
residing in Lima. And wherever there are enslaved people one can also find
slave resistance. Colonial Peru is no exception here and the one name that
seems to most personify that resistance is Francisco Congo. He must have
been extraordinary man and I am trying diligently to find information on
him.
Because of its geography and the fact that Peru was not on the direct
colonial slave trade routes (mostly on the Atlantic Ocean) the majority of
Africans in Peru were not brought over directly from Africa but were bought
from the British, Dutch and Portuguese after they were already in the
Americas. Even under the background of poverty and enslavement, however,
some of these Africans achieved great distinction. One such person was
Martin de Porres.
Martin de Porres, eventually to become St. Martin de Porres, was born
December 9, 1579 in Lima, Peru. He was the son of a Spanish nobleman and a
freed African slave mother. At age eleven, he became a servant in the
Dominican priory. Promoted to almoner, he begged for more than $2,000.00 a
week from the rich to support the poor and sick of Lima. Placed in charge of
the Dominican's infirmary Martin became famous for his "tender care of the
sick and for his spectacular cures." Because of him the Dominicans dropped
the stipulation that "no black person may be received to the holy habit or
profession of our order" and Martin took his vows as a Dominican brother.
For Lima's poor Martin de Porres established both an orphanage and a
children's hospital. And, interestingly enough, he set up a shelter for
stray dogs and cats and nursed them back to health. He lived in self-imposed
austerity, never ate meat, fasted continuously, and spent much time in
meditation and prayer.
In 1639 Martin de Porres died of fever. He has been venerated since the day
of his death. He was beatified in 1873 and canonized on May 16, 1962. He is
the first African-American saint.
AFRICANS IN PERU TODAY
Today, the African presence in Peru numbers about two million people out of
a total population of about twenty-three million. During my visit, however,
I saw only a handful of these sisters and brothers. I did manage, with some
expenditure of effort, though, to find one African taxi driver, brother
Enrique. Unfortunately, the only words of English that brother Enrique ever
uttered were "Black power" but that was enough for me to hire him. I saw no
Africans working in the airport, in the markets, in the museums, in the
banks, in the hotels or on TV.
So, the reports of pervasive and rampant anti-African racism in Peru will
not come as much of a surprise to us. What else is new? According to one
account, "It is systematic and permanent. It goes from patronizing attitudes
to outright discrimination: blacks are dirty, thieves, all the stereotypes."
In August 1996 New York Times correspondent Calvin Sims documented some of
the racial bias directed against Africans in Peru, pointing out that:
"Although nightclubs feature Afro-Peruvian musical groups and a third of
Peruvian soccer players are black, the number of black professionals is
estimated at fewer than 400, and there are no black executives of Peruvian
companies, no blacks in the diplomatic corps, judiciary, or the high ranks
of the clergy or military. The country's even smaller Japanese community has
produced the current President, but no black politician has risen even as
far as Congress.
While incidents of open discrimination are far less common in Peru than in
the United States and Brazil, which has the largest black population in
Latin America, Peruvian blacks say they encounter racism daily.
In public, they say, they are frequently called derogatory names like `son
of coal' or `smokeball.' At job interviews, they say, they are often told
that their experience and references are excellent but that the owners are
looking to hire people with `good presence'-- a euphemism for someone who is
white."
RETURN TO PERU
In spite of all that, perhaps even because of it, I tell you now that I am
looking forward to returning to Peru in November 2004 and I want to take you
with me. I want to see a lot more of the Moche and their marvelous portrait
vases. And this time I will be visiting both the Temple of the Sun and the
Temple of the Moon. And I am going to enter more churches and cathedrals,
where I understand that in addition to statues of Black Saints there are
depictions of Black Christs as well. And this time I will be accompanied by
local African activists and will visit the African community of Chincha,
south of Lima. And, of course, I will be returning to Cusco and Machu Picchu
high in the Andes Mountains.
So come along with me. Join me and get your education. Come along with me as
we further document the global African presence and write one more chapter
in the greatest story never told.
May 10, 2004
*Runoko Rashidi is a traveler and historian engaged in a love affair with
African people. He is very active Online and is the moderator of the Global
African Presence egroup. He is currently coordinating an
educational-cultural tour to Peru scheduled for November 2004 entitled
"Looking at Peru through African Eyes."
For more information on Runoko and all of his travels please visit Runoko's
award winning Global African Presence Web Site at http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/nkrumah.html
THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
AFRICANISM AND CULTURE
(EXCERPT OF SPEECH GIVEN AT THE CONGRESS OF
AFRICANISTS)
By KWAME NKRUMAH
(ACCRA, GHANA--DECEMBER 1962)
Posted by RUNOKO RASHIDI
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"We have made our contribution to the fund of human knowledge by extending
the frontiers of art, culture and spiritual values."
-- Dr. Kwame Nkrumah
If we have lost touch with what our forefathers discovered and knew, this
has been due to the system of education to which we were introduced. This
system of education prepared us for a subservient role to Europe and things
European. It was directed at estranging us from our own cultures in order
the more effectively to serve a new and alien interest.
The central myth in the mythology surrounding Africa is that of the denial
that we are a historical people.
It is said that whereas other continents have shaped history and determined
its course, Africa has stood still, held down by inertia. Africa, it is
said, entered history only as a result of European contact.
Its history, therefore, is widely felt to be an extension of European
history. Hegel's authority was lent to this a-historical hypothesis
concerning Africa. And apologists of colonialism and imperialism lost little
time in seizing upon it and writing wildly about it to their heart's
content.
To those who say that there is no documentary source for that period of
African history which pre-dates the European contact, modern research has a
crushing answer. We know that we were not without a tradition of
historiography, and, that this is so, is now the verdict of true Africanists.
African historians, by the end of the 15th century, had a tradition of
recorded history, and certainly by the time when Mohamud al-Kati wrote
Tarikh al-Fattash. This tradition was incidentally much, much wider than
that of the Timbuktu school of historians, and our own Institute of African
Studies here at this University, is bringing to light several chronicles
relating to the history of Northern Ghana.
The Chinese, too, during the T'ang dynasty (AD.
618-907), published their earliest major records of Africa. In the 18th
century, scholarship connected Egypt with China; but Chinese acquaintance
with Africa was not only confined to knowledge of Egypt. They had detailed
knowledge of Somaliland, Madagascar and Zanzibar and made extensive visits
to other parts of Africa.
The European exploration of Africa reached its height in the 19th century.
What is unfortunate, however, is the fact that much of the discovery was
given a subjective instead of an objective interpretation. In the
regeneration of learning which is taking place in our universities and in
other institutions of higher learning, we are treated as subjects and not
objects.
They forget that we are a historic people responsible for our unique forms
of language, culture and society.
It is therefore proper and fitting that a Congress of Africanists should
take place in Africa and that the concept of Africanism should devolve from
and be animated by that Congress.
Between ancient times and the 16th century, some European scholars forgot
what their predecessors in African Studies had known. This amnesia, this
regrettable loss of interest in the power of the African mind, deepened with
growth of interest in the economic exploitation of Africa. It is no wonder
that the Portuguese were erroneously credited with having erected the stone
fortress of Mashonaland which, even when Barbossa, cousin of Magellan, first
visited them, were ruins of long standing.
Yiddish vs.
Hebrew (Y vs. H, Jewish vs. Hamitic)
"Yiddish Language,
chief vernacular of Ashkenazic Jews, who are native to, or who have
antecedents in, eastern and central Europe.
One of the Germanic languages, Yiddish is written in Hebrew characters (some
of them used differently than for writing Hebrew).
Yiddish (meaning "Jewish") arose between the 9th and 12th centuries in
southwestern Germany as an adaptation of Middle High German dialects to the
special needs of Jews. To the original German were added those Hebrew words
that pertained to Jewish religious life. Later, when the bulk of European
Jewry moved eastward into areas occupied predominantly by Slavic-speaking
peoples, some Slavic influences were acquired. The vocabulary of the Yiddish
spoken in eastern Europe during recent times comprised about 85 percent
German, 10 percent Hebrew, and 5 percent Slavic, with traces of Romanian,
French, and other elements. Many English words and phrases entered Yiddish,
becoming an integral part of the language as it is spoken in the U.S. and
other English-speaking countries. Apart from vocabulary changes, modern
Yiddish differs from modern German mainly in the simplification of inflections
and syntax, the acquisition of a few grammatical traits influenced by Slavic
speech, and its looser pronunciation of Germanic words. Yiddish pronunciation
was also significantly influenced by Slavic languages. In its word formation
and use of auxiliary verbs Yiddish is similar to English, which also is a
Germanic language with a simplified grammar and a variously enriched
vocabulary.
Yiddish exists in two groups of dialects, one of which is further subdivided.
The western dialect, with few speakers, is centered in German-speaking areas
of western Europe. The more widely distributed eastern group has a
northeastern branch and a southern branch. The northeastern branch includes
the Yiddish spoken in the Baltic countries and in the northwestern areas of
Russia, and by Jewish immigrants or descendants from those areas. The southern
branch-which has central and southeastern subgroups-includes the dialects
spoken in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine."
Microsoft® Encarta® 98 Encyclopedia. © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation
Jewish (Yiddish) translations and transliterations of Paleo Cushite Hebrew,
Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew form the basis of the religious beliefs of
millions of people worldwide. Yet Paleo Cushite Hebrew, Phoenician, and
Chaldee Hebrew was as foreign to the Jewish translators as Spanish is to
me—even though Spanish is written using the same alphabets used to write the
English that I speak. Thus is important to note that nothing can make people
deny and defy obvious truth more than religion. But thank God Almighty that
truth is, more often than not, independent of what we believe, or what our
religion has taught us to believe.
_______________________
In a message dated 6/6/2003 12:28:17 AM Eastern Standard Time, EMANSMYRNA
writes:
6. Hebrew ceased to be spoken by the common people during the Babylonian captivity. It was practically a "dead language" as early as B. C. 250. In the absence of expressed vowels, its pronunciation was likely to become lost. So the Scribes took four consonants, "a h w and j," and inserted them into the text to indicate the vowel sounds. While this device helped to some extent, in the end it led to confusion, often raising the question: "Is this letter a consonant, belonging to the original, or is it a vowel-letter, added by the Scribes?" Moreover the insertion of these vowel-letters did not prove sufficient; then, as late as 600-800 A. D., a whole system of vowel-signs was added, most elaborately indicating the vowels of each word as tradition had preserved it. These vowel-signs were interlinear, and therefore did not confuse the text, as did the vowel-letters. With vowel-signs we might indicate the pronunciation of Gen. 1:1, as given above, something like this (separating the words) :"
http://www.godswordtowomen.org/lesson1.htm
"Additionaly, the letters 'Y' and 'V' are frequently inserted in modern unpointed Hebrew to make reading easier, this is called full pointing and gives rise to alternate spellings. Foreign words are often partially pointed to indicate the pronounciation. The rules of pointing are very strict and complicated. They were introduced in the early Middle Ages to aid pronounciation in a language that largely died out in spoken form; the Hebrew of the Bible and the Talmud is not pointed, though the later commentaries are."
Page 159-160, Hebrew Phrase Book and Dictionary, Berlitz
The first article tells us that, to save the Hebrew language from certain
death, the scribes inserted certain letters to point to a particular vowel
sound. Though that may have appeared as something new, it was only a new
version of an old pointing used when Hebrew was originally developed from the
theophoric Hamitic Ethiopian language. Thus to save at least a written form
of Hebrew, the scribes had to revert back to the roots of the language. For
instance, most Hebrew scholars mistakenly interpret YHWH to mean Yahweh. The
truth is that the 'Y' points to the vowel sound 'E' and the 'W' points to the
vowel sound 'U'. Thus the true interpretation of YHWH is He-hu. The God was
called He-hu and the people who worshipped the God were called He-hu-ba-ru.
One of the original Hamitic Ethiopian names for Jehovah was He-hu-ba. I can't
be sure of how the 'B' sound became 'V', but surely that was one of the
original Hamitic Ethiopian names for Jehovah. In Exodus 6:3, we learned that
God was not known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as Jehovah, but as God
Almighty. That tells us that the most original name of the God of the Hebrews
was simply He. Remember that, in the theophoric Hamitic Ethiopian language,
He meant infinite, which also means unlimited and almighty.
____________________________________
During the Babylonian captivity of Israel, many Indo-European members of the
Middle-East Hebrew family were assimilated into Babylonian society. After the
captivity, many of those who had been assimilated migrated towards western
Europe—while those who kept the faith written in Cushite Hebrew went back to
build the temple in Jerusalem (originally known in Pale Cushite Hebrew as
Heru-sa-tem). The Indo-European members of the Hebrew family that traveled
westward came under the influence of the Germanic languages. Thus the new
language that was being developed in Babylon by assimilated Indo-European
Hebrews became the Germanic language now known as Yiddish, or the Jewish
language. Therefore, in a European dominated world, these Yiddish speaking
people became the people the world turned to for the purpose of translating
Paleo Cushite, Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew. Thus the Jews became the
world's leading authorities in such translations and transliterations.
Starting with YHWH and YHWS', let us take a look at how the Yiddish speaking
people developed their translations and transliterations of Paleo Cushite,
Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew:
Note, in the picture above, that the letters are written from right to left.
But when using English alpha bets written from left to right, it reads YHWH
and YHWS'. As stated earlier, pointing to vowel was present in Paleo Cushite,
Phoenician, and Chaldee Hebrew long before the Yiddish form of pointing was
developed. Thus, in YHWH, the Y pointed to an E sound and the W pointed to
the U sound, and in Paleo Hebrew, the name was pronounced He-hu. Though the
Yiddish translators had some knowledge of the ancient system of pointing
borrowed from the Hieroglyphs of the Hamitic language, they translated YHWH as
Yahweh. Now let us take a look at YHWS', the Hebrew name Jesus gave himself.
Note that it contains a W that would point to an U sound after the S. The
last letter ' is , which is ayin, a guttural sound that is generally
transliterated as an A sound. The use of guttural sounds as vowels and
glottal stops also derived from the Hamitic language of the hieroglyphs. YHWS'
also contains an S, which was mistakenly interpreted to be an SH sound. That
is easily understood when we see the Hebrew letters for S and SH, = sin = S, =
shin = SH. The position of the dot that distinguish between the S and SH was
not present in the Hebrew of the time of Jesus. Yet many Yiddish translators
translated YHWS' to be Yahshua and sometimes Yehshua or Yeshua. But what
happened to , the W? Note that it is used in YHWH to yield Yahweh, but
is not used likewise in YHWS'. In YHWS', they reverted back to the ancient
system of using W to point to a U sound. Thus the S (which some interpret to
be SH) is followed by a U. Some Yiddish translators tried to tried to cover
up not using W in YHWS' as it is used in YHWH by translating YHWS' to be
Yahushua. Such a translation of W could have only come from someone who knew
that W was originally used to point to U sound in the Hu of He-hu (YHWH).
Therefore, it should be clear that the name Jesus gave himself was He-sa or
He-u-sa, which, in the Hebrew of his day, could have been interpreted as Eesua—seeing
that , the Hebrew letter for H, was also used for an E sound. That is also
the reason why the Arabic transliteration of the name Jesus gave himself is
found written as both Eesa and Esa. Using Shua in the translation Yahshua or
Yahushua no doubt derived from efforts to clearly identify Jesus with being
the Messiah, which derive from the Hamitic term Maa-shua.
By: Emmanuel Afraka
THE HAMITIC ETHIOPIANS
WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?
Though all sort of tropical plants and flowers may have grown there 7,500
years ago, today the Garden of Eden is not a garden at all. It is a rather
harsh land that on the eastern border of the greatest swamp on earth called
the Sudd. The Sudd is the physically manifestation of Nu, the watery mass of
Creation. Since the Sudd is quite possibly the watery mass in which all life
on earth began, it could truthfully be said that the Hamitic Ethiopians came
out of the watery mass of Creation where all life began. The Garden of Eden
is also known as the land of the Nuer tribe-situated in southwest Sudan and
west of present day Ethiopia. Even until today, the Nuer still adorn their
huts with the watery hieroglyphic symbol for Nu-as well as other symbols that
were used in the development of the original Hamitic Ethiopian hieroglyphs.
The Nuer also hold an important clue as to what is the actual object that
symbolizes Neter. Neter implies God on earth or God that came out of Nu to
reign on earth, which the Hamitic Ethiopians no doubt pronounced as Nu-te-ra
or Nu-te-ru instead of Neter. There are many Egyptologists who believe that
the symbol for Neter is an axe. Recently a few Egyptologists have form the
opinion that it is actually a roll of cloth attached to a stick or handle.
The latter opinion is much closer to the truth. The Nuer had a custom of
adorning their huts with distinctive ornaments that served as the family-crest
of a given family. The Hamitic Ethiopians adopted this custom to identify the
hut of God on earth (Heru) and also the huts of the sons of God (the direct
descendants of Heru). Only the Hamitic Ethiopians used a roll of cloth
attached to a pole to fly over the hut as a flag. They were perhaps the
inventors of the first flag used to identify a king or kingdom.
From a land east of the Garden of Eden, armed with the Gospel of Heru, the
twelve Hamitic Ethiopian tribes of Heru set out to propagate his gospel around
the world (Genesis 3:24 and 4:16). South they traveled into Central Africa
and possibly even South Africa. East they traveled into Ethiopia, Kenya,
Tanzania, Yemen, Oman, India, Sri Lanka, and the Bay of Bengal. North they
traveled into Nubia, Egypt, and the Middle-East. I don't find much evidence
of them traveling west. All I've found is God warning Adam (or Heru) to stay
on the east border because of a prophesied evil that would develop among his
seed in the west (Page 35, Forgotten Books of Eden). This was no doubt a
prophecy of African people being brought to the Americas as slaves and,
afterward, becoming apart of the evil system of their slave masters and
equally wicked and ungodly.
HOW DID THEY LOOK?
In Genesis 6:4, Moses tells us that the sons of God were giants. In
Deuteronomy 3:11, he tells us that King Og was the last of these giant Hamitic
Ethiopians to be found in the Middle-East. The giant Hamitic Ethiopians were
no doubt the product of marriages between Dinka, Nuer, Hamar, Moru and perhaps
even Shilluk, which no doubt went on for thousands of years before producing
Heru, as the genetic perfection of all their best genetic contributions.
Rwanda and Burundi provides us with a living picture of the physical
appearance of the ancient Hamitic Ethiopians.
"History textbooks might snub this connection. But we derived it
from the direct observation of our friends the Giant Watussi of Rwanda. And
these tallest, handsomest, keenest of all Africans, undoubtedly are the purest
"Surviving Pharaohs" on earth."
When and why the far ancestors of the Watussi left Ancient Egypt still is a
matter of speculation. How they managed to reach Rwanda and there to maintain
intact all the essential traits of their race, is another of the many question
marks presented by Central Africa.
At any rate, the incontrovertible fact is that there the Giant Watussi are, in
the middle of vast masses of Bantu natives, like a small unique island of
thoroughbred Hamites.
Pages 138-139, "Here Is Africa," Ellen and Attilio Gatti
THE HAMITIC CURSE
The giant Hamitic Ethiopians (Watutsi) of Rwanda and Burundi also give us a
living picture of the ungodly philosophy of racial superiority that spawn the
Hamitic curse that has ultimately fallen upon the entire Black race. Though
it is popular belief that the Watutsi only migrated from Ethiopia to Rwanda
and Burundi in the 14th or 15th century A.D., the truth is that Hamitic
Ethiopians have been living in that region of Central Africa for more than
7,000 years. Thus for thousands of years, the Watutsi, Hutu, and pygmies (Twa)
of the region lived in please-even to the point that many of the people now
classified as Watutsi are part Hutu and vice versa. Yet many of the Watutsi
retained the perfect physical Hamitic Ethiopian form of Heru (also known as
Osiris, the Lord of the Perfect Black). In search of another place on earth
were the Prefect Black could still be found in its purest form, many giant
Hamitic Ethiopians migrated from Ethiopia to Rwanda and Burundi in the 14th or
15th century A.D. They brought with them all the elements that were the
source of the Hamitic curse. They taught the resident giant Hamitic
Ethiopians that they were superior to their Hutu and Twa neighbors, and
therefore had a god given right to make these inferior people their servants
and slaves. Thus the recent conflicts between the Watutsi and Hutu, and the
Hutu genocidal campaigns against the Watutsi also give us a living picture of
God's wrath against the ungodly philosophy of racial superiority. The
ungodly philosophy of racial superiority introduced into Rwanda and Burundi by
a Hamitic Ethiopian faction and the servitude and slavery that accompanies it
is the same thing that certain Hamitic Ethiopia factions did in Egypt
thousands of years earlier. History repeats itself until someone sees the
truth and teaches the solution.
Genesis 9:21-25 tells us that a curse was placed on a descendant of Ham
because Ham laughed at the drunkenness and nakedness of his father Noah. The
truth of that story has more to do with a Hamitic Ethiopian faction that
promoted an ungodly philosophy of Hamitic Ethiopian racial superiority. Thus
they laughed at Noah's failed attempt to establish the Gospel of Heru and the
Divine Science therein among an inferior race of Oriental people that lived
along the Bay of Bengal. Since there is no such thing as a superior race or
an inferior race, a curse fell the descendants of Ham that has ultimately
fallen upon the entire Black race. However, it is important to note any and
all ungodly philosophies of racial superiority are eternally condemned no
matters who promotes it-as the Europeans will soon see.
As for the Black race, there is no need to despair. Jesus told us clearly
that our curse will be brought to an end. You are currently willing in the
time when Jesus' promises and prophecies concerning us will be fulfilled.
REVELATION 22:3
"And there shall be No More Curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:"
REVELATION 5:9-10
"And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the
book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us
to God by thy blood [which is the Hamitic Ethiopian blood of Heru] out of
every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;"
"And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the
earth."
It is truth that the Everlasting Gospel of Heru, which is currently being
restored, will redeem us out of kindred, tongue, people, and nation that have
held us in subhuman and inferior circumstances, as though we are an inferior
race of people. It is also true that it was God's plan that the sons and
daughters of Heru should reign on earth. But God's plan also includes the
spiritual sons and daughters of Heru and not just the biological ones.
Furthermore, God's plan to have the sons and daughters of Heru reign on earth
has nothing at all to do with a reign through force or military might.
Neither does it have anything to do with us subjugating other races of people
or any other ethnic or cultural group and making them our slaves. The reign
that God had in mind is a reign through service and example to humanity-the
most powerful and everlasting reign possible. As the firstborn of Creation
and the first loved of the Heavenly Father, it has always been the
responsibility of his sons and daughters to lead the rest of humanity into
path of self-realization and liberation. Self-realization is where and when a
human being can truly recognize his or her self as a forever-living son or
daughter of God himself.
THE HAMITIC ETHIOPIANS IN THE MIDDLE-EAST
Hundreds of years before the first Hamitic Ethiopian dynasty was established
in Memphis many of the Hamitic Ethiopian descendants of Heru had already
settled in the Middle-East. Once there, they established a holy city they
named Heru-sa-tem, which is known today as Jeru-sa-lem. Heru-sa-tem meant
that Heru's blood (or sons) were sealed in that land, and was therefore one of
the cities in heaven. Because the Cushites of Ethiopia and Nubia traveled to
the Middle-East with and after them, as members of the Hamitic language group,
it is sometime very difficult to tell where one group left off and the other
picked up. However, it is clear that the presents of both these groups in the
Middle-East as diversified dialects of a single language group is the source
of what is written in Genesis 11:1 concerning the entire earth having once
been one language.
Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0858548.html
BOOK REVIEW
A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming;
published by Xlibris,
436 Walnut Street, 11 Floor
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106 U.S.A.
1(888) 795-4274
1(215) 923-4686
www.xlibris.com
A HISTORY OF RACISM AND TERRORISM, REBELLION AND OVERCOMING
"The Faith, Power and Struggle of a People"
In these times when the questions and concerns about the right of
some to make symbolic statements (eg cross burnings, confederate flags,
ect..) is being debated and when historical trends of a dark era in
American history seems by some to be repeating, the book, "A History of
Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming," is one of the most
powerful books written on the origins and developoment of racism from
ancient times to the present and how retaliation, rebellion and
revolution against racism was crucial to saving the existance of Blacks
around the world. The book begins wih how and why racism or "color
consciouisness" or "varna" was invented in one particular nation that
has had a racist system intertwined with religion for over three
thousand years. It looks at how invaders from Eurasia invaded the
glorious Black Cushic Dravidian-Ethiopic civilization of the Indus
Valley and used the religion and culture of India's ancient Black
Negro-Australoid people to subjugate them. This series of invasions
began about 1700 B.C., the same time that the Hyksos and other
Eurasian/Semitic barbarians were infiltrating Egypt and the "Middle
Eastern" Black civilizations such as Sumer, Elam and Mesopotamia. These
invasions and genocide in India continued till the 300's B.C. (Read more
on this subject also from "Susu Economics: The History of Pan-African
Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth," pub. by
www.1stbooks.com also at
www.barnesandnoble.com One of the
most important figures in Black
Cushic-Ethiopian East Indian history between 500 to 300 B.C. was Gautama
Bhudda of the Sakya Clan who contributed to the upliftment of the
oppressed castes in India.
Racism as a factor during the Greek and Roman times was not as
devastating to Blacks in the Roman, Greek or the regions they had
contact with. In fact, both the Greeks and Romans saw the "Ethiopians"
(a term for all Black Africans) as the most accomplished people and as
the creators of culture and civilization. The Romans and Greeks were
more concerned about the Slavs, Celtics, Germanics and other Europeans.
In fact, the Romans refused to carry out a war with Nubia/Cush because
their warriors were devastating to the Romans. The Roman Garison at
Asan was destroyed by a Nubian Queen and the Roman statue was carried
off to Napata the Cushite capital (see
http://community.webtv.net/barnubianempire )
The book tracks the beginning of racism from the late Roman period in
Egypt when the Africans and others who refused to accept the Roman/Greek
version of Christianity were considered "infidels" or "pagan" a term
used today in the genocidal war against Africans carried out since the
600's A.D., by the Semites ("Arabs") in Sudan and other parts of Africa.
Racism throughout the writings of the Hebrews/Jews and those who
translated the Bible is carefull discussed in this great book. In fact,
the myth called "The Curse of Ham," (which was actually on Canaan, the
father of most Middle Eastern and Southern European "whites,"), was used
to justify the invasion, colonialist agenda and enslavement of Blacks by
the Europeans as well as the Semites. This idea of Blacks being slaves
of Shem and Japhet came from ancient corruptions of the Biblical
writings.
RACISM AND SLAVERY IN EUROPE/AMERICA AND THE REBELLIONS AGAINST IT
This great book takes a thorough look at how the English and other
Europeans designed a potent form of racism based on religion as well as
a system of surfdom that existed in Europe before African slavery. In
fact, the book points out that some of the same racist techniques used
on Africans, such as refusing to educate and punishing Blacks for
reading was used on Irish surfs in Britain and Ireland during the Middle
Ages.
The enslavement of Black tribes and nations who were in the Americas
before Columbus is well explained based on expert research. This
finding uncovers a fact in European history, and that fact is that both
gold and Black slaves were being searched for by the early European
explorers. Those Blacks aboriginal to the Americas, Melanesia, Africa,
India and elsewhere who had Negroid features were targeted for
enslavement. Hence, millions of Blacks found in parts of the Americas
were enslaved even before Africans were brought to the Americas. Some
of these Black American nations such as the Waschitaw Nation, the Black
Californians, the Afro-Darienite of Panama, the Califu of the Caribbean,
the Choco of Colombia, the Black Caribs of Honduras/Central America and
the many Black Nations mentioned by I. Rafinesque in his work, "Black
Nations of America," (Friends Society, Philadelphia 1833), were owners
of lands in the Americas. In fact, the Waschitaw Nation of the
Louisiana region still continues their fight for their lands to this
very day. For a complete reference on the ancient Black nations of the
Americas, see the book, "A History of the African-Olmecs," pub. by
1stbooks Library, 2595 Vernal Pike, Bloomington, Indiana 47404 U.S.A.
www.1stbooks.com also at
www.barnesandnoble.com
BLACK REBELLION AND REVOLT AGAINST SLAVERY
The book emphasizes and discusses the fact that from the time Africans
were put on slaveships, they revolted, escaped slavery and created their
own separate communities throughout the Americas. The revolution in
Haiti, the rebellions in Jamaica, Guyana, Cuba, Mexico, the Caribbean,
the Quilimbos in Brazil, the revolts throughout the Americas is
discussed in this great work.
PAB
paulnubiaempire@webtv.net
http://community.webtv.net/nubianem
http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire
The following speech was delivered by the AFRIKAN
WORLD REPARATIONS
& REPATRIATION TRUTH COMMISSION'S (AWRRTC) Co-Chair, Master Teacher H.M.
Maulana, 19 November, 2000, at the Accra Technical Training Centre, Accra,
Ghana West Africa. Excerpts of that speech are cut herein below.
TITLE:
IS AFRICA A DEBTOR OR CREDITOR CONTINENT???
HISTORICAL FACTS-Genesis of Man and Humanity:
Science, today, has
proven that the Creator created the first human being (homo-sapien) on
Earth in Africa. Fossil remains of Black Africoid peoples have been
found in East Africa by the renowned anthropologist family of Doctors
Richard and Mary Leakey. These fossil remains have been radio-carbon
dated at 3.5 million years (Time Magazine March 14, 1994, page 45).
According to the Leakeys, this ancient Africoid human was walking
upright like modern man (Dr. Mary Leakey, Serronghetti Plains, Tanzania
where Fossils remains were found). Humankind born around the Great
Lakes Region of Africa, almost on the Equator, is necessarily pigmented
and black. The 'Gloger Law' calls for warm-blooded animals to be
pigmented in a hot and humid climate (Dr. Diop, Civilization or
Barbarism, page 11, Lawrence Hill Book, 1991 USA). Also,
Palaeo-anthropological scientists have proven that the Black Africoid
race were the original people in Europe and Asia, from the Iberian
Peninsula (Spain & Portugal), to Lake Baykal in Russia's Siberia,
France, Austria, the Crimea (Southern Ukraine) and the Basin of Don
(South Central Russia) - Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, page 15; Dr.
Charles Finch III (M.D.), Echoes of the Old Darkland - Themes from the
African Eden, 1991, Kenti, Inc., USA. Racial differentiation, that
is, the coming of the Aryan-White European race, did not come about on
Earth until after the last Ice Age (Around 26,000 years Before
Present). The Palaeo-anthropological and genetical (scientific)
explanation for this race's genesis is that they are the product of a
mutation, coming from the Black Africoid genus during the last Ice
Age(Wurm 1 & 2 Ice Age). The geographical area of the world where this
evolutionary mutation took place was in Europe, Southern France, Spain
as well as the Caucasus Mountains of South west Asian.
For a better perspective and understanding of how the Aryan-White
European
race mutated out of the original Black Africoid race, please read: Dr.
Diop,
Civilization or Barbarism, pages 11-25; Dr. Charles S. Finch 3rd.(M.D.),
Echoes of the Old Darkland, pages 1 through 57, and John Jackson, Man,
God,
and Civilization, pages 16 - 28, Carol Publishing Group, 1990, N.Y. USA.
According to British anthropologist, Christopher Stringer, of
Britain's Natural History Museum: Africa is the only region that has
continuity of evolution from primitive to modern humans - first modern
Europeans and Asians do not show up before 40,000 years Before Present
(B.P) -Times Magazine, March 14, 1994). Also, geneticist, Dr. Luigi
Cavelli Sforza of Stanford University California, USA, states that the
Caucasoid (Aryan White) and Mongloid (Yellow race), did not come into
existence until about 26 thousand (26,000) years ago. They are both
products of the Black Africoid race's mutation during the last Ice Age
(Dr. Luigi Luca Cavalli Storza, New York Times Newspaper, July 27,
1993: article entitled - "A geneticist maps Ancient Migration."
Moreover, Newsweek Magazine USA and International, January 11, 1988,
published the results of a twenty years genetic research project under
the title: "Search for Eve". The front cover of this magazine and the
inside story revealed that 'Eve' was a small Black skinned woman,
dating back as far as 250 thousand years ago in Africa. Adam was
depicted as a Black man. The research analyis was done by extracting
the 'Mitochondrion DNA' from the female placenta of Black Africans,
Aryan-white, and the Mongloid yellow race as well all mixtures in
between. The black female was the oldest and strongest evidence amongst
the lot. Ancient Greek poet Hesiod writes - there once was a "golden
race." "All good things, "Hesoid writes, "were theirs. The Fruitful
earth poured forth her fruits unbidden in bondless plenty. In peaceful
ease they kept their lands with good abundance, rich in flocks and dear
to the immortals." The golden race were the blacks and the golden age
was the period before the arrival of the Whiteman. (Hesoid, Works and
Days, quoted in, John mansley Robinson, An Introduction to early Greek
philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968, pp.12-12; from Paul L.
Guthrie, making of the Whiteman, page 22,1992, Beacon Communication,
San Diego, CA, USA) Around 15,000 years Before Present, interbreeding
between the Black Aficoid and the mutated Aryan-White European race
created the Chancellade man (prototype of the yellow race). This
contact was first made around the Caspian Sea area (Caucacus
Mountains), during the Reindeer Period in the Magdalenian-age (Diop,
Civilization or Barbarism, page 16)
BLACKS EARLY PRESENCE AROUND THE EARTH The Americas: It has been
proven by numerous scientists of various disciplines that the oldest
civilization known in the Americas, the Oldmec, was of Black Africoid
origin. The Oldmec was the parent culture and science of the Maya,
Aztec et al. This civilization flourished at least five thousand years
or beyond, Before the Christian Era (John Jackson, Man, God, and
Civilization, page 288). The Black Oldmec Civilization was
ethnologically connected to Africa's Nile Valley Civilization (Ancient
Kush, Nubia and Egypt, Diop, Nations, Negres et Culture, page 116).
They were noted in the Americas for their high order of Mathematics,
Pyramids and the Calendar.
The disappearance
or
extinction of these ancient Black Africoid peoples in Europe (6,000
years ago); Asia (2500 B.C.E._800B.C.E.) and the Americas (3,000
B.C.E.), has come about only as a result of the mutated Aryan-White
European race's barbaric assaults of genocide, against Black Africoid
Civilization in those regions. (Diop, Civilization or Babarism, page
19). Thus, many of the Black Africoid peoples who survived these
barbaric assaults, after centuries or even millenniums of fighting
against these invading hordes of Aryan-Whites, coming from the steppes
of the Caucasus Mountains; they were forced to flee back to their
ancestral Motherland Continent, Africa, for safety.
ANCIENT EGYPT: THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD - (EAST & WEST) Posterity should
thank and honor one European-American writer and researcher, Gerald
Massey (1828-1907), for such profound scholarship and honesty in
writing his book: Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, First
Published 1907 - Again, published 1992 by Black Classic Press,
Baltimore, MD. 21203 USA. In this book, Massey shows indisputable
proof that Western and Eastern Civilizations, today, were founded and
are operating on the sciences and philosophy of Ancient Egypt, Above
all, Massey proves that Ancient Egypt was created by an all Black
Africoid people whose roots lead back to the interior of the African
Continent around the Great Lakes (Khui (twi) Land) taken from Massey's
"Book of the Beginning"). Ancient Egypt's true name was Kamaat -
spiritual people of Truth, Justice, Law, Order and Righteousness (from
Teacher Maulana's abstract, the Theft of African Civilization: And Its
Ramification Towards The Year 2001 A.D., Accra, 1997).
WORLD HISTORY LINKS
Blacked Out by White Wash Muslim Scientists and Islamic Civilization W. African Civilizations
Correcting_Rewritten_History MindStation X : Renaissance Dr. Ivan Van Sertima
Italy - Italian Renaissance - Zoological studies Re: For Sale: A DNA Test to Measure Racial Mix
KAM Africans in Early Europe The TRUE Black History Home Page
European Crusades, Christianisation, and Colonisation West Africa
William Greaves: Documenting The Truth In Film - Global Black News ...
African Contributions to World History Sephardim and their History The Iberian Golden Age, European Expansion
Origins of Islamic Intolerence by Mark Silverberg African American and Ancient Egyptians
ANCIENT AFRICA AND EARLY ROME The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy - Chapter II
Great Homepage of Alexander, or Something Like That Alexander The Great - Links
Alexander the Great on the Web Alexander the Great History Project Alexander was Great
The Third Great Race War: The Moors Invade Europe History Timelines on the Web ... The History Beat
Information and facts about Cleopatra History of Alexandria: Cleopatra
Queen Cleopatra - Last Pharaoh of Egypt - Queen Cleopatra VII Raising the lost city of Cleopatra
The House of Ptolemy: Caesar, Cleopatra, & Marcus Antonius THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND
The Moors in Europe Moor Info Latin American Muslim Unity: History of Islam in Latin America
Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler Table of Contents
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers Adolf Hitler and The Holocaust Hitler Was Not An Atheist
WAS HITLER A ROTHSCHILD | The controversy of the occult reich IS AMERICA
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER Hitler's Christianity African Timelines Part II
The Death of Hitler: The Full Story with New Evidence from Secret Russian Archives
Hitler's Rise to Power The OMEGA File : HITLER ESCAPED Henry the Navigator
Dr Edward Scobie: African Presence in Early Britian: Dominica political figure
The African Presence in the Americas many centuries before Columbus
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004
History of Lawful Gold and Silver
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From
the Ambedkar Journal at http://www.dalitstan.org,
published by Thomas C. Mountain, 1997
"APARTHEID
IN INDIA"
The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization
there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior
warriors to the Blacks but they were aggesssive, developed
sophisticated
military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds
of
years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating
most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a
rigid,
caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of
conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the
Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their
White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodely
racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the
overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact,
the
Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used
interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and
reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist
country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's
visit
to
India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White
race."
Caste law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of
life, including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and
occupation. This is not to deny that there were certain elements of
the
Black aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant
White
social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were
regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have
emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were
said
to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for
the
Black masses in conquered India. It was written that:
"A Sudra [Black] who intentially reviles twice-born men [Whites] by
criminal abuse, or criminally assaults them with blows, shall be
deprived of the limb with which he offends. If he has criminal
intercourse with an Aryan woman, his organ shall be cut off, and all
his
property confiscated. If the woman has a protector, the Sudra shall
be
executed. If he listens intentionally to a recitation of the Veda [a
traditional Hindu religious text], his tonque shall be cut out. If he
commits them to memory his body shall be split in half."
Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people
of India for generation after generation after generation. With the
passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based
caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now
practiced
throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism."
"THE BLACK UNTOUCHABLES OF INDIA: THE WORLD'S
MOST OPPRESSED PEOPLE"
The greatest victims of Hinduism have been the Untouchables. Indeed,
probably the most substantial percentage of all the Black people of
Asia
can be identified among India's 160 Untouchables. These people are
the
long-suffering descendants of Aryan-Sudra unions and native Black
populations who retreated into the hinterlands of India in their
efforts
to escape the advancing Aryan sphere of influence to which they
ultimately succumbed. India's Untouchables number more than the
combined populations of England, France, Belgium and Spain.
The existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context
of Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of
Karma and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables
because of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts
describe these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact
with them was regarded as polluting.
Untouchables were usually forced to live in pitiful little settlements
on the outskirts of Hindu communities. During certain periods in
Indian
history Untouchables were only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu
communities at night. Indeed, the Untouchables' very shadows were
considered polluting, and they were required to beat drums and make
loud
noises to announce their approach. Untouchables had to attach brooms
to
their backs to erase any evidence of their presence. Cups were tied
around their necks to capture any spittle that might escape their lips
and contaminate roads and streets. Their meals were taken from broken
dishes. Their clothing was taking from corpses. They were
forbidden
to
learn to read and write, and were prohibited from listening to any of
the traditional Hindu texts. Untouchables were denied access to
public
wells. They cound not use ornaments and were not allowed to enter
Hindu
temples. The primary work of Untouchables included scavenging and
street sweeping, emptying toilets, the public execution of criminals,
the disposal of dead animals and human corpses, and the clean-up of
cremation grounds. The daily life of the Untouchable was filled with
degradation, deprivation and humiliation.
The basis status of India's Untouchables has changed littled since
ancient times, and it has recently been observed that "Caste Hindus do
not allow Untouchables to wear shoes, ride bicycles, use umbrellas or
hold their heads up while walking in the street." Untouchables in
urban
India are crowded together in squalid slums, while in rural India,
where
the vast majority of Untouchables live, they are exploited as landless
agricultural laborers and ruled by terror and intimidation. As
evidence
of this, several cases from 1991 can be cited: On June 23, 1991
fourteen Untouchables were slaughtered in the estern state of Bihar.
On
August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death in the northern
state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an Untouchable woman was
stripped in public and savagely beaten in the southern state of Andra
Pradesh. On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an
Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple.
Official
Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables
have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures
continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of
atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone.
However,
Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities
against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and
murders,
are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed, justice for
Untouchables is rarely dispensed.