Bantu-Kelani
Honour

You said : "But what about the many Africans who come on this board? Many of them were not born in the Motherland. They can’t talk about how great their culture and societies were because of the slave trade. It’s hard to say exactly who came from where, they don’t know their indigenous lineages, villages, or communities."

I would respond by loking at actual events that happenned in our not-so-distant past. I can use the following as an example because it happenned in my community and I know people who are descended from the first ones. Repartriation is not a new ideal. In fact, even before the formalised brutality of atlantic slavery was discarded for more cost-effective ways of stealing labour and enterprise, Africans were returning home from plantations in the Caribbean, amerikkka and from the brutish isles. Some were resettled in Liberia, some in Sierra Leone and some in nigeria. These are the ones I have direct knowledge of (because I know their descendants and I have seen the works they did). There are people in nigeria today with names like Johnson (one a former governor of Lagos State), Doherty (founder of a college in Ekiti State), Macauley (as in Herbert Macauley, an influential leader of the anti-colonial struggle. His image is on the Naira and one of the busiest roads in Lagos is named after him), and Pedro (a businessman and also the name of a busy street in Lagos), Perriera, Da Silva, Domingo..etc.

The point I am trying to make is this, Africans in the diaspora have always been free to ADOPT whatever culture they choose. This is a right that ALL Africans have had since time immemorial. There is only one nationality indigenous to Africa and that is the African. The geographical location you were born in is only as important as you wish it to be. Names like Yoruba, Kongo, or Zulu only represent a culture. Which implies that any African, by total immersion in a culture can become a member of that culture. There are many Yoruba families with names that have no meaning in Yoruba, yet, no one would dream to dispute their place in the society. There are prominent Yoruba families whose first ancestor in Yoruba land was from some other part of Africa. And I have seen Africans from different parts of the continent with names that are also used by the Yoruba.

And you said "Let’s get real we are in dire need for linguistic, political, and economic unity among Africans and a CULTURAL consciousness that is deeply rooted in prehistoric African history"

I would say that if we look closely at commonalities between philosophies and practices, we can observe that there existed, prior to the imposition of colonial borders, a level of mobility/intermingling among the different cultures of Africa. Africans travelled widely, did business with each other and learned from each other. If that natural process had continued without the intervention of malign forces, I am sure that we would have reached a point of better mutual overstanding by now. However, we adopted meaningless national identities and started defending privileges that are actually no more than positions on a queue that leads to the execution block.

I agree that we need to uphold the primacy of our common ancient origin. However, I also think that our yet to come unified community will be based more on things that are yet to be. I brought up Haiti in the original post because I strongly believe that the age of African liberation started there. It was on those islands that men and women speaking different languages, with different names for the Almighty, united, faced down and defeated the 'whites' on the battlefield. To me what happenned at Haiti is of greater significance than Adowa because, difficult as it may have been, the only ones Emperor Menelik had to defeat were the italians. The Haitans defeated the french, the british, the spanish, and any other combination of 'whites' that were arrogant enough to step a foot on their island. The Haitan revolution changed the ENTIRE world because if they had not decimated napoleon's best forces, the usa that we know today would never have come into being.

In the end though, it was the Haitans who defeated themselves. How and why are the lessons we need to be absorbing right now. What were the qualities that made them succeed and what caused them to become vunerable? Lessons like this, I think, should be given the same level of importance as we give to the ancient past. It will only be after we absorb the lessons from this (and similar struggles) that we will be able to create political/economic unity among Africans and a CULTURAL consciousness that will last.

Wisdom and Strength