THE MYTH THAT AFRICANS ‘SOLD THEIR PEOPLE’

Europeans have attempted to distance themselves from - and avoid accountability for - their atrocities during the centuries-long slave trade by propelling narratives that it was Africans who sold them slaves. On this version, Africans share the blame for the horrors faced by Black people.

During his opening remarks on African identity and the decolonisation of education in Africa and the Caribbean at the University of West Indies in Jamaica, at the PJ Patterson Institute for Africa Caribbean Advocacy, vice chancellor Hilary Beckles spoke about the importance of reclaiming our narratives. As Beckles puts it, when history is told from the gunman’s perspective, you inevitably get a distorted picture.

Continued……. Beckles dispels the myth that Africans willingly sold their fellow Africans into slavery. While he notes that there were certainly corrupt individuals back then, just as there are now, they were a minority. In Nazi Germany, for example, there were Jewish people who collaborated with the regime, yet no one blames them for the Holocaust. So why is this the line of argument used when it comes to slavery?

Most Africans who took part in the slave trade did so for survival and did not have much of a choice. When European narratives paint our ancestors as ‘business partners,’ it is misleading - a business partner is free to not partake in a business venture without consequences, whereas Africans were not.

Moreover, Europeans exacerbated divisions amongst our people, spurring ethnic conflict and wars amongst Africans. It was often ‘prisoners of war’ who were bought by Europeans from Africans.

The European narrative has been used to further divide Black people across the world, thus continuing the divide-and-conquer tactics that have ensured African disunity and exploitation for centuries.

Sources

https://books.google.co.ke/books/about/African_Voices_of_the_Atlantic_Slave_Tra.html?id=YrIjNMu5_vsC&redir_esc=y

https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/blacks-did-not-sell-blacks-into-slavery

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/hitlers-jewish-soldiers/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/myths-and-misconceptions_b_9637798

https://archives.newsday.co.tt/2014/08/01/debunking-myths-of-the-slave-trade/

theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/us-played-key-role-in-southern-sudans-long-journey-to-independence/241660/

CUBAN DOCTOR DEFENDS CUBA’S MEDICAL BRIGADES

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently attacked Cuba’s international medical brigades. On 25 February, the Miami-born Cuban announced any country’s officials found accepting Cuban medical solidarity may lose their US visas.

This is not first time a US administration has attacked Cuba’s medical solidarity, as US President George W Bush imposed a 2006 programme to encourage Cuban doctors to defect to the US. The Obama administration ended that initiative in 2017, but the Biden administration renewed it in 2022.

However, such a restriction could have a terrible impact on Africa as most of its countries benefit from Cuban medical support.

Continued……In this video, we hear firsthand from a Cuban doctor based in Burkina Faso on whether Cuba’s programme amounts to ‘slavery.’

Sources

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-considers-ending-program-that-lures-cuban-doctors-to-defect-idUSKBN0UM259

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/12/509575935/obama-administration-ends-refugee-policy-that-favored-cubans

https://wassermanschultz.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2835

WHITE SUPERIORITY COMPLEX HARDWIRED FROM CHILDHOOD

In the 1940s, psychologists Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark conducted the Doll Test, a landmark study to assess the psychological impact of segregation on Black children. The groundbreaking study became the first piece of psychological research referenced by the Supreme Court, influencing its decision to abolish school segregation. In the study, Black children aged three to seven were presented with four identical plastic dolls, differing only in colour. They were asked questions to gauge their racial perceptions and preferences. Most of the children favoured the White doll, associating it with positive traits, while they viewed the Black doll negatively.

In this clip, we fast-forward to more recent times - and see White school children in the US being given a very similar test.

Continued….. They’re asked to identify which of a range of cartoon characters with various skin colours satisfies given traits. Without fail, good attributes get assigned to the light-skinned ones, and bad qualities - to the dark-skinned ones.

But this isn’t an innate human tendency, it is the product of centuries of racial hierarchy entrenched through Western education, media and social conditioning. The biases persist globally, shaping perceptions in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, where colonial histories and Western cultural dominance continue to elevate whiteness. More critically, the test confirms the idea that a White-superiority complex is built into young minds by the education - or rather, the indoctrination - that they receive from an early age.

How does this clip make you feel?

Sources

https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

S. AFRICAN SURGEON WHO CURED DEAFNESS WITH 3D PRINTING

In 2019, South African surgeon Mashudu Tshifularo made history by becoming the first doctor to perform a 3D-printed middle-ear transplant, successfully restoring the hearing of a 35-year-old accident survivor. His work has revolutionised ENT (ear, nose and throat) surgery in South Africa and around the world. In 2000, he became the first and only ENT professor in his country. His groundbreaking work has garnered global recognition, earning him the Africa Genius Award. It’s also been referenced in the hit television show Grey’s Anatomy. Beyond his medical achievements, Tshifularo is a dedicated pastor and author, driven by a passion for transforming lives.

Hear Us Roar: https://news.1rj.ru/str/AfricanStream

‘AIR FRANCE IS A LIAR’

On 7 August 2023, Air France suspended all flights to Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, shortly after an anti-imperialist coup brought President Abdourahamane Tiani to power in Niger. 

A few days later, on 12 August 2023, the airline walked back their decision, announcing it would resume flights to Burkina Faso. However, this time, Burkina Faso’s National Agency for Civil Aviation (ANAC) refused to permit Air France to operate until the West African country approved of its flight routes. Finally, in early October 2023, Air France submitted a request to Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Transport to resume flights. In response, President Ibrahim Traoré’s government stated that France’s government would have first to change its travel advisory warning against Burkina Faso.

France and the United States classify Burkina Faso as a ‘red zone’ country, and the US ranks Burkina Faso as a level 4 security risk, indicating the most danger.

Continued……
However, in this recent clip, Traoré argued that this classification has much more to do with politics than with security concerns. For this reason, he encourages Burkinabé citizens to share the truth about life in Burkina Faso wherever they can.

Video credit: @rtburkina

Sources

https://apanews.net/burkina-faso-sets-condition-to-resume-air-france-flights

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/burkina-faso-travel-advisory.html

‘HISTORY OR HIS STORY?’ - RAP PIONEER

Today we celebrate the birthday of the brilliant conscious poet and godfather of rap, Gil-Scott Heron (1949-2011). This brother left a permanent mark on music, poetry and culture at-large with his profound lyricism and jazzy instrumentals. Some credit him with being, if not among the originators of hip hop, then certainly a source of inspiration for the music.

Heron’s work was inherently and deeply political. Writing and performing with a purpose, his voice wailed for revolution and the liberation of Africans worldwide. While his most popular poem, “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” served as the perfect ballad to the Black Power Movement, his song, “Johannesburg,” raised awareness of the conditions for Black South Africans under apartheid.

Continued……In this poem, ‘His Story,’ recited during his 1982 concert Black Wax, Heron shows how mainstream colonial rhetoric and language shapes our perception of Africa and the world. Performed over forty years ago, it remains relatable and relevant. Though born in Chicago, Heron’s poetic stanzas focus uniquely on the African continent.

Hear Us Roar: https://news.1rj.ru/str/AfricanStream

On 1 April, 1955, the African National Congress (ANC) urged South African parents to withdraw their children from schools in protest of the so-called Bantu Education Act. Enacted in 1953, the law introduced an inferior curriculum for Black students, further segregating the education system and condemning youths to menial jobs.

The Bantu Education Act imposed a patently lower quality of education on Black South African children. By design it would produce an unskilled or semi-skilled labor force meant only to serve White-settlers.

While schools were restricted to teach Black children Afrikaans and English, lessons were to be delivered in Indigenous African languages, not to empower African cultures but as a means of isolation, to maintain inequality and reinforce an inferiority complex. The end goal? To ensure Black youths could not compete with White-settler youths, preserving white dominance.

Continued….. The mastermind behind the law and diabolical curriculum was future Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd. At the time he served as Minister of ‘Native Affairs’. Addressing the South African parliament on the need for the act, Verwoerd infamously said there was no place for Indigenous Black South Africans in the European community. Referring to the need to transfer control of mission schools (most of which closed after the passing of the act) to the apartheid regime, he added: “It is of no avail for [the native] to receive training which has its aim in the absorption of the European Community, where he cannot be absorbed. Until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his community and misled him by showing him the greener pastures of European Society where he is not allowed to graze”

The Bantu Education Act was finally repealed in 1979. However, its negative impact on Black South Africans could not. To this day, schools for Black children and youths remain pitifully underfunded and wealth remains in the banks of thieving White-settlers who ensured such inequality through educational curriculums and other policies that perpetuated racial inequalities.

Sources

https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?kid=163-581-2

https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/download/f6bb666ae24a99af27caf82f697d4328b132299cec03800214325a88e393c081/2003673/Wills_2011_The_history_of_Bantu_education.pdf

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/anc-protest-bantu-education-act

https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/black-south-africans-boycott-bantu-education-system-1954-1955