Khotso K D Moleko
Johannesburg - It is understandable that after years of enslavement, colonialism and apartheid, black people would after their emancipation, seek to redefine themselves.
Normally, this can happen, as is the case with post-independent Africa through a renaissance or the so-called "returning to our roots" phenomenon.
And that is when problems begin because the conflict now is which roots, which culture and from what phase of history?
Take for example the attempts of notable and respectful gentlemen like Dr Mathole Motshekga and Professor Zulu Mathabo including ladies like Dr Nokuzola Mndende, who seek to equate African spirituality with European culturalism in Christianity.
The result becomes a haphazard construction, of a parallel and non-existent Afro-religious and political philosophy, if it aims to equate the Lord Jesus to African legends, and Christianity to African traditions.
This is because the measure of Christianity is dependent on a decision and choice for belief and effect, whereas ancestral covenants in African spirituality force themselves on a person. Surely, it is fully acceptable to rewrite and reconstruct the history of black Africans, because it was distorted to reduce their thinking capacity and the potential of Africans to resist colonialisation, slavery, and the subhuman status conferred on us by whiteness.
But then, African history as it pertains to the collective of Africans, is not reliably recorded, only appearing as fragments of oral history that are still being documented.
Then there is the fact that the little that Africans can read about themselves, was documented by Europeans and early black African Christians; for instance, the earliest writings of African languages were through the translation of the Bible.
And concerning the issue of ancestors, the question is which ancestors are worthy to be remembered and which ones are not if one considers that modern Africans venerate the name of ancestors that lived less than 1 000 years ago.
Yet we should all know by now that modern humans have existed for a hundred of thousands of years.
Through DNA profiling, many African-Americans can trace their roots to certain parts of Africa, and if that happens in South Africa, will black people adopt new ancestors perhaps from Nigeria, Cameroon, and Egypt?
If these attempts aim to unite Africans through a common history that opposes the brainwashing of Christianity, then it is also the best way to divide them.
And if anyone wants to argue about the ancestral spirits, then I shall be blunt in saying that there is no harmony between the ancestral spirits of God in the African sense and the Spirit of God in the Christian sense, because whenever the name of the Lord is invoked over them, there is a clash and they seldom reign supreme.
If this may sound as insensitive, then this democracy is a fallacy and will not address issues that have the potential to maintain the painful reality of Africans. Let us not forget that it took Christianity to unite Africans for the first time in modern history, for freedom and independence. Right up to the end of aggressive European invasion and colonialism, each major nation or tribe fought on its own and was defeated without the assistance of neighbouring/rival ones.
The hatred of the Nguni against the Sotho and vice versa and within each Abantu branch was so much that it did not touch the other.
Go into both oral and written history and you will not find any evidence that says the Zulu people went to fight with the Xhosa people against the English or the Sotho went to assist the Pedi against the Afrikaners.
As a matter of fact, the conquered groups joined the invaders as happened with the “brown” Khoi and maybe San, who helped the colonists against the black and 'foreign' Bantu.
The irony of it all is that these convictions are now present in enlightened modern blacks and under a black-led government.
To this day, black people are chasing away black Africans as foreigners who must leave their South Africa so that they can be left to prosper alongside their true relatives who are white.
Therefore, these attempts of the renaissance are not going to yield anything, unless the reconstruction of African history and renaissance is under the unity achieved by Africans through Christianity.
We are in a world facing climate change, other nations are busy constructing nuclear bombs, vaccines, and spacecraft, but Africans are busy sitting around a fire and sharing myths and legends, that cannot unify us and which are through the same research methods of the people they seek to shame.
It is useless to say “it is sensitive” because if we are not honest as Africans about our mistakes, achievements, and history, then we can never be able to reconstruct a credible one.
A reconstruction only based on revenge mentality, and denialism, cannot give birth to a stable and righteous outcome, regardless of the brutality of the facts of history.
Khotso K D Moleko, Bloemfontein, Free State