Guests at the lecture

It realigns perceptions of the global reality and the corporate structure and comprehension of this new community. The structure and comprehension of the new community are based on new parameters of identification that rest on the newly acquired value orientations that complete the defection from and alienation of the old self and identity. This defection, replacing the normative epistemological and ontological certainties of the previous Self and identity, is the essence of the born again. Religious identification offers a distinctive “sacred” worldview and ‘eternal’ group membership, unmatched by identification with other social groups. The post-transformed community that has emerged relies on unreflective acceptance of transformed common practices and norms signaled by common identity markers such as religion.

. These transformations first alter the perceptions of self interests as identity can be perceived as pivotal to interest articulation. There is no persuasive explanation of why people should develop and change some habits of community as distinct from others unless self-interest is included as habit, dynamically interacting with cognitive dimension of identity. Meanwhile, as a social identity anchored in a system of guiding beliefs and symbols, religion ought to serve a uniquely powerful function in shaping psychological and social processes, unmatched by identification with other social groups. This has been the case in much of Africa, and more importantly in sub-Sahara Africa.

Flowing from this was the convenient validation of the abuse of black humanity. The intensity of the expressions continues to fluctuate according to the vagaries of the evolving epochs on mainstream avenues of the trajectory of human evolution. With this comes the denigration of every phenomenon associated with this devaluated humanity. The survival of Black humanity is thus infused with conditionalities expressed in a concrete ultimatum that constitutes one polar end of the two fundamental choices before black humanity.

These conditions were daily realities at all levels of the black Being: as individuals, as collectivities, communities and societies, and ultimately as a race. These preconditions have underpinned the construction of the universe of the Black Earthling and his social institutions in relation to the larger universe of the construction of the dominant external Others. This polar end terminates with the coerced and, lately, willing submission of the Black Self and of the totality of his Being through a process of self repudiation of the very essence of his humanity. This has been the precondition to survive along the margins of human existence.

This choice leads to a totalistic defection from the Self. The migration is consecrated in the
acceptance of the concept and terms of being born again by the defector from the Self. The alternative pole is simple: the defiance of a conscious self-validated black Being and self that stands to fight or perish standing. This is the “on reste debout” philosophy. It is a radical choice without avenues for compromise and without a continuum that is imposed on every black Being, often unconsciously. The dilemma can however be stark and defined by the compelling imperatives confronted by the individual, groups or a social institution, including the state. Often they entail conscious choices associated with dire consequences.

At the tail end of the last century and more pronounced in this millennium, Black humanity has begun to face the consequences of its massive choice to self-repudiate and defect from the Self to be consigned as a willing proxy to the margins of the sphere of the dominant external Other. The massive flight has been from the Self rather than a fight for the validation of the Self. The manifestations of this self-denigrating choice are explicit and the implications continue to haunt it. The core of this toxic defection is the coming spiritual whitening of the entirety of black humanity. The political expression of this defection is a willing complicity in the execution of neo-imperialist agenda of the metropole. The massive defection of black humanity to the side of his oppressor is reminiscent of the impact of the early gin, gifts from the agents of the invisible benevolent lord, to the African chief who got all intoxicated. In this state of involuntarily induced stupor, the drunken chief sold every subject into slavery. In essence, black humanity continues to reel under the influence of the toxic in the numerous variety of intoxications from all manner of foreign brews, following the choice to defect from its authentic moorings and his dissociation and alienation from his timeless understanding of the universe. Unhinged under influence from its own self and his understandings of the cosmos and his locus in this universe, the wretchedness of the Black Earthling is hauntingly daunting.

The struggle for self-validation has, therefore, been in the order of a compelling imperative for the continued existence of this and the consecration of the integrity of the inner core that remains defiant in the face of the massive assault and the visible capitulation to the external Others. Yet, viewed from a longitudinal span of history, the struggle has been a Babylonian dance: for every step forward –black humanity has taken two steps backward. From slavery to the contemporary era of a resurgent renaissance, progress has been fitful. The deck has certainly been stacked against black earthlings. Emancipation of a people entails the simple task of self-validating the integrity of its own identity against the odds. In this, African societies would seem to have failed.

Karen Armstrong, a renowned authority, observes that this is what has happened in the modern world. She notes that the Axial sages have an important message for our time, but their insights will be surprising-even shocking- to many who consider themselves religious today.

“It is frequently assumed, for example, that faith is a matter of believing certain creedal propositions. Indeed, it is common to call religious people ‘believers’, as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity. But most of the Axial philosophers had no interest whatever in doctrine or metaphysics. A person’s theological beliefs were a matter of total indifference to somebody like Buhda. Some sages steadfastly refused even to discuss theology, claiming that it was distracting and damaging. Others argued that it was immature, unrealistic, and perverse to look for the kind of absolute certainty that many people expect religion to provide.”

The immediate question to ask is where this leaves the mass of black humanity that has repudiated its own understandings of the cosmos, only to find there are no certainties on that plane anywhere, including in the hegemonic faiths that have ensnarled it with the false promises of absolute certainties. In the final analysis, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which it has no evidence. In fact every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable. As such in succumbing to the assault of foreign powers and their faith about the superiority of their religion and accepting the denigration of African traditional forms of worship, black humanity has been duped and fallen victim to the toxic propaganda of foreign and hegemonic theologies. The central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error or, at best, dangerously incomplete. Only black humanity has been intoxicated on this toxic foreign brew and fallen flat on its face to this propaganda common to all religions. The price of the historic capitulation of the Black Earthling to the hegemonic external Other, among others, is the pervasive proneness to instability and conflict in her communities.

The levers of foreign hegemonic religions, in redefining and in the imposting of false identities and strange conceptions of the cosmos that elevated the place of every strand of creation save for the denigration of black humanity in that cosmos, have proven to be the greatest source of carnage at all levels of human interaction among black peoples. They are central to the inability of black humanity to emancipate itself from the debilitating existential conditions in which it is universally trapped. It was easy to let go of the heavy metal contraptions around the necks, wrists and legs of black humanity, after he had internalized toxic influences that have him bound to precepts and dehumanising worldviews that essentially denigrate his being. Black humanity remains trapped in its old chains of servitude to others of his own volition. In many ways he helps to tighten the shackled contraptions. Kofi Awoonor enunciates this danger when he states that if you come to a people and take away their religion, their spirituality, which is their first line of defence and protection, you dislocate them completely. Surveying the dehumanizing mental landscape created by extraneous influences and now perpetuated a lost black humanity, he laments that “Africans are the only people who forget” Finally, given the existential situation of black humanity, he calls for some kind of reconstruction of the mental landscape around our objective historical reality. The process of instigating identity defection is adapted as the deadly games of the aspiring dominant forces have evolved. But the end goal has not changed.

Accordingly, the reflexive structure of the identity of the Black Earthling is constantly being processed and his social order is constantly fluid and unstable. These transformations of the social identity of the Black Earthling are driven by overt violence, if considered necessary to attain the goal in a cost-effective manner, or subtle engagements instituted by the external Other to change the cognitive appreciation of Self, the destruction of the entrenched social practices and habits that constitute and define behavior as well as give structure to everyday relationships. In essence, the induced genetic modification of the core values, understandings of the universe embedded in the self- appreciation of the locus of the Black Earthling in this cosmos all alter the foundation of the cognitive complexity of reality. The adulteration of this Self transforms the cognition of identity and social reality. It realigns perceptions of the global reality and the corporate structure and comprehension of this new community. The structure and comprehension of the new community are based on new parameters of identification that rest on the newly acquired value orientations that complete the defection from and alienation of the old self and identity.

This defection, replacing the normative epistemological and ontological certainties of the previous Self and identity, is the essence of the born again. Religious identification offers a distinctive “sacred” worldview and ‘eternal’ group membership, unmatched by identification with other social groups. The post-transformed community that has emerged relies on unreflective acceptance of transformed common practices and norms signaled by common identity markers such as religion.

Flowing from this was the convenient validation of the abuse of black humanity. The intensity of the expressions continues to fluctuate according to the vagaries of the evolving epochs on mainstream avenues of the trajectory of human evolution. With this comes the denigration of every phenomenon associated with this devaluated humanity. The survival of Black humanity is thus infused with conditionalities expressed in a concrete ultimatum that constitutes one polar end of the two fundamental choices before black humanity. These conditions apply at all levels of the black Being: as individuals, as collectivities, communities and societies, and ultimately as a race. These preconditions have underpinned the construction of the universe of the Black Earthling and his social institutions in relation to the larger universe of the construction of the dominant external Others. This polar end terminates with the coerced and, lately, willing submission of the Black Self and of the totality of his Being through a process of self repudiation of the very essence of his humanity. This has been the precondition to survive along the margins of human existence.

This choice leads to a totalistic defection from the Self. The migration is consecrated in the acceptance of the concept and terms of being born again by the defector from the Self. The alternative pole is simple: the defiance of a conscious self-validated black Being and self that stands to fight or perish standing. This is the “on reste debout” philosophy. It is a radical choice without avenues for compromise and without a continuum that is imposed on every black Being, often unconsciously. The dilemma can however be stark and defined by the compelling imperatives confronted by the individual, groups or a social institution, including the state. Often they entail conscious choices associated with dire consequences.

At the tail end of the last century and more pronounced in this millennium, Black humanity has begun to face the consequences of its massive choice to self-repudiate and defect from the Self to be consigned as a willing proxy to the margins of the sphere of the dominant external Other. The massive flight has been from the Self rather than a fight for the validation of the Self. The manifestations of this self-denigrating choice are explicit and the implications continue to haunt it. The core of this toxic defection is the coming spiritual whitening of the entirety of black humanity. The political expression of this defection is a willing complicity in the execution of neo-imperialist agenda of the metropole. The massive defection of black humanity to the side of his oppressor is reminiscent of the impact of the early gin, gifts from the agents of the invisible benevolent lord, to the African chief who got all intoxicated. In this state of involuntarily induced stupor, the drunken chief sold every subject into slavery. In essence, black humanity continues to reel under the influence of the toxic in the numerous variety of intoxications from all manner of foreign brews, following the choice to defect from its authentic moorings and his dissociation and alienation from his timeless understanding of the universe. Unhinged under influence from its own self and his understandings of the cosmos and his locus in this universe, the wretchedness of the Black Earthling is hauntingly daunting.

The struggle for self-validation has, therefore, been in the order of a compelling imperative for the continued existence of this and the consecration of the integrity of the inner core that remains defiant in the face of the massive assault and the visible capitulation to the external Others. Yet, viewed from a longitudinal span of history, the struggle has been a Babylonian dance: for every step forward –black humanity has taken two steps backward. From slavery to the contemporary era of a resurgent renaissance, progress has been fitful. The deck has certainly been stacked against black earthlings. Emancipation of a people entails the simple task of self-validating the integrity of its own identity against the odds. In this, African societies would seem to have failed.

Given this broken world and its implications as exterminating externalities for black humanity and in the specific location of Mazisi Kunene, implicit in his epics are counter denunciations of the fundamentals and elemental strands of the construction of the troubled systemic and predatory Human order, of which the draconian Apartheid system was an immediate local and temporal expression. Put together, Kunene’s life’s work was to advance the legitimacy of the various expressions of God’s creation, the authentic voice of the authentic narratives of this inclusive and various authentic strands of the universe. In effect, he legitimized the disparate world views of all expressions of God’s one and singular humanity, their numerous differential but valid experiential specificities and the mode of expression of the uniqueness and peculiarities of each strand. These all were legitimate and affirmative contributions that validated the totality of the collectivity of the human imprint and spirit. Mazisi Kunene’s work was thus to add significant value to the search for the resolution of the crisis of the legitimacy of a beastly inhuman Human order. Some affirm that this born again syndrome was integral to the project of the imposition and enforcement of modernity. The kindly benign mission civilatrice to a supposedly backward race with a heart of darkness. Kunene beamed the light on and illuminated the core of the beauty of this much maligned heart to the world.

That era of hate and denunciation of reason that entailed also the repudiation of the essential oneness of humanity, elicited various intriguing responses. Some, conflicted and completely taken in by the denunciation of the essences of their humanity as blacks, produced negative works that rationalized their own subjugations and thus self repudiated the very essences of their belabored own Africanness. These conflicting emotions were reflected in the relationship that subsisted between major South African intellectual gladiators of the time. The evolution of the relationship between Benedict Wallet Villakazi and Mazisi Kunene exemplified this. Their early relationship was marked by some interesting ideo-philosophical frictions. But these were later resolved as Kunene built on Villakazi’s appropriation of the classicism of the great Shaka Royal poet. It would seem that the early challenge for Benedict Villakazi, as with many in contemporary times, was resolving a conflict of allegiance to his Catholicism and his sense of cultural nationalism that is founded on the continued validity and acceptance of the cosmology of his nativity that was denounced by his catholic faith.

The overarching centrality of the response to the Shaka phenomenon in the confrontation with the forceful hegemonic intrusions is confirmed by the massive engagement of the Zulu Cultural Society of the 1940s. Mazisi Kunene was too young to be a member, but the Shakan preoccupation of the Cultural Society permeated the intellectual circuits of the generation after. Thus Mazisi’s struggle advanced the focus of Zulu intelligentsia dating back to early nineteenth century. That struggle could be interpreted as the great battle to preserve the sanctity and wholeness of the Zulu man. The essential Zulu is the one who has retained his appellation as a Zulu, attuned to the spirit of his Zulu ancestors, articulates his cognitive essences in Zulu, and completely at peace with the primacy of his personal references and referrals as Zulu. But his goes beyond the Zulu. It is same for the Ndebele, the Xhosa, the Mossi, Baule, Yoruba, Igbo, Itsekiri, etc. IT is so for th essential African.

Kunene and the Burden of the Broken World of Black Humanity
So, Kunene’s was not a peculiarly Zulu fight. It was the burden of the broken world of black humanity. The main struggles of Africa are all exemplified in the life and times of Mazisi Kunene. It is the struggle at the level of ideas and in the robust ideational jousting to validate our essences by rolling back externally imposed narratives. Chinua Achebe aptly puts it as the struggle to tell our own stories. Yet, that struggle has proven to be the weakest point of Africa. The imposed contextual deficits by their nature ineluctably delineated the epochal struggles to mend the debilitations of their time-a life commitment to the unlimited pursuit of mending the very broken world of the oppressor and against th the dilapidated word and world of the oppressed. Redeeming both the oppressor from his moronic cognitive simplicities and elevating the cognitive complexities of a self repudiating oppressed through an affirmation of his worth and sanitation of his abused universe was the objective. These challenges surfeited the era of Mazisi Kunene and its children. For Kunene, the cosmic mind (ultimate wisdom) conceptualizes the totality of life in the same way as the chameleon’s vision circles in all directions at once. In this robust mythological ambit, several truths converge to express the variation of the ultimate truth. There is no absolute truth for through the history of life, the central thematic thrust is the idea of balance. In thought and in this weltanschauen, the concept of a world divided between opposing forces has no place.

Here the operative cosmic forces are projected not in conflict with one another but as moving towards the establishment of desirable balance. Conflict is therefore a temporary and insignificant phenomenon which accelerates the process of establishing a balance.1 Against this background, in the context of social action, every development constitutes a motion that expressed by often irrational an mindless responses to episodes. Yet, the forces of cosmic growth are so akin to each other that they are depicted in a state of integration. It is thus that motion is creative in the sense that it simultaneously sets up the process of destruction and birth.2 Flowing from this, the life force which directs the seed to each stage of actualization contains within it both temporal and universal attributes. Some of these are corrective , that is they restore the cosmic balance after every point of degeneration and regeneration. He identifies Gods like Mthobi, Simo and others as playing such integrative catalytic roles.

In the volatile age of darkness and hatred in which Kunene does this transcendental explications, Masilela Ntongela advances that given the disruptions encrypted in the process of modernity, the real challenge before New African intellectuals of Zulu extraction in the 1940s was how to preserve and transmit the exemplariness of Shaka’s greatness in military art rendered in an intellectual genre. Ntongela asserts then that it is not surprising that Zulu intellectuals such as Mazisi Kunene, R R R Dhlomo, Jordan Magubane, H I E Dhlomo, Benedict Villakazi, John Langlibalele Dube all wrote either essays, or novellas or poems or epics in search of the historical meaning of Shaka. With due cognizance of the corpus of works that emerged from this search, Mazisi Kunene is acknowledged as having produced that exemplary historical appreciation and representation of Shaka in literary form. That’s on the literary plane. Given the rotten spiritual order that poisoned the fate of humankind in South Africa, Mazisi Kunene soars very high in validating the abused spirituality of black humanity.

But the challenge of self redemption or the redemption of a disdained people clearly defined the burdens of Mazisi Kunene. He is the man I have dubbed, awed by the tenacity of his spirit, the breadth of his canvass, the depth of his intellect, the purity of his engagement, the musicality of his lyrics, the density of his passion, the stoutness of his vision, the transcendence of his mind, and the sheer intensity of his life’s works, all on behalf of Africa, an Abami Eda- Yoruba for a Spirit Being. The Abami Eda is a roving human bearing an organic arsenal encapsulating the very spirit of a people, especially in times that threaten to crush the communal being, the organic communal spirit and the communal essences as well as ultimately, the soul of the community. A spirit being is recognized in the constancy of its implacable and principled defiance to these threats. It is the last one imbued with the unquenchable pulse of the ancestor standing. To the ramparts!! To the Ramparts.

Thus is it that in the beginning was the spirit world. The spirits speak in tongues and codes. And so has been the triumph of the word over tribulation. Ask Mathabo Kunene, Mazisi Kunene’s defense witness.
May the Ancestors continue to embrace and nourish your mind;
may Africa’s children sing the songs of our Forefathers.

AMANDLA!!!

N G I Y A B O N G A

Ademola Araoye (Ph.D), delivered this Inaugural Mazisi Kunene Lecture at Durban International Convention Center, Durban, Province of Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa on 18 March, 2017

Ademola Araoye is a former Nigerian diplomat and a retired official of the United Nations. Currently a Visiting Professor associated with the SARCHi chair on African Diplomacy and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg, Araoye is author of critically acclaimed books including Cote d’Ivoire: The Conundrum of a Still Wretched of the Earth and Sources of Conflict in the Post-Colonial African State. He is a regular contributor to TheNEWS magazine