Africa World Now Project

Image: John Biggers, Band of Angels: Weaving the Seventh Word, 1992-93

According to the Dogon, “in the beginning before anything existed there was the Supreme Being, Amma. Amma existed in the form of an egg divided into four parts by four bones [the clavicles], which were joined together. Apart from the egg, nothing existed, for Amma rested on nothing. The four arts of the egg represented the four elements: water, air, fire, and Earth. So, the fundamental elements already existed in the egg in embryo form. In the egg Amma had designed the world before it was created” [51]. Ultimately, Amma created the world through the creation of the signs and likewise will destroy it through the destruction of the signs …” [53].

We share this creation story, in part, for a number of reasons, but primarily because it is aligned with the assertion in Chukwunyere Kamalu’s, The Word at Face Value: An Abridged Account of Dogon cosmology, that “mainstream scholarship on the cosmological world of the Dogon of Mail in West Africa, has become a battleground over what an African people can and cannot know” [11].

Dr. Nubia Kia asserts that, “myths in Africa are similar to what Joseph Campbell calls “living myths.” He uses living myths to distinguish them from the connotative usage of myth meaning “a lie.” Living myths signifies the opposite of the connotative construct. J.J. Bacofen argues that the origins of history can only be revealed through myth since in myth “lies the beginning of all development.”

Dr. Kia, quoting W.T. Stevenson, further explains the primacy of mythological discourse. According to Stevenson, “the essential character of our personal and social lives are shaped by myth, or it is by the power of particular myths which determine by way of determining our fundamental presuppositions, the way we shape our cultural, social, political, and economic lives. We do nothing of significance which is not informed by myth in a fundamental way, and the more significant our act, the more this is true. It is the symbols within the context of myth which give rise to all thought [Kia, A River of Prophecy: Constructing a Sacred History of African Americans].

Mythic symbolism attempts to explain the spiritual nature of peoples and their inseparable connection to a universal order. Therefore, if someone wishes to pervert an idea, the most effective means is to reverse the sacred symbols or icons associated with the idea or ideas [Kia, A River of Prophecy: Constructing a Sacred History of African Americans].

Today, AWNP’s Tasneem Siddiqui sits down with Dr. Nubia Kia, to explore the relationship between myth & its continuities in sacred + secret histories.

Nubia Kai received a Ph.D. in African historical literature and film from Howard University, an MA degree in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin.

Her work has been published in Black Scholar; Black World; Essence Magazine; Black American Literature Forum; Catalyst; Obsidian; Moving Out, Journal of Black Poetry; Left Curve; Journal of African Literature Association, Black Camera: International Film Journal; Journal of African American History, to name a few.

Her book, Kuma Malinke Historiography: Sundiata Keita to Almamy Samori Toure, is an extensive study of the mythology, epics, poetry, and expository narratives of the Mali Empire. She has been an ardent researcher of comparative religion, anthropology, mythology, and Africana studies for over thirty years.

Professor Kai is also a poet, novelist, and playwright who has received a number of awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts Awards, six DC Commission on the Arts Awards, and the Larry Neal Writers Competition.

She has two collections of poetry, Peace of My Mind and Solos, a collection of fables, The Sweetest Berry on the Bush, and an historical novel, I Spread My Wings And I Fly.

The history of the geographical region now called, Eritrea is deep and rich.

Eritrea has been occupied in turn by Ottoman Turks, Egyptians, Italians (from 1886 until 1941), the British until 1952 (who defeated Italy in Eritrea during the second world war) and the Ethiopians ever since [Pateman 1990:51]. In 1 952, the British and the United Nations determined on a federation of Eritrea and Ethiopia.

In the first 10 years after the federation was formed Ethiopia's direct rule over Eritrea was imposed. Towards the end of 1952 La Voce de' Eritrea, a newspaper critical of the federation, was banned. In 1956, following the suppression of the opposition waged by workers and the peasantry, the Eritrean General Union of Labor Syndicates was banned. In 1960, the Eritrea flag was lowered, and separate courts were established. In 1962 Eritrea was forcibly annexed by Ethiopia [Worku Zerai, Organising Women within a National Liberation Struggle: Case of Eritrea, 1994; Pateman, 1990: 6].

The national struggle for national liberation began in 1961 with the formation of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) which split from the ELF in 1970 gained control over many towns in the country, but as the Soviet Union intervened on the Ethiopian behalf, independence could not be achieved in the late 1970s. The Soviet intervention forced withdrawal from the towns that were controlled by the EPLF to the northern part of the country.

The EPLF continued fighting against the Ethiopian occupation until it liberated the whole of Eritrea in May 1991. Eritrea became an independent country officially in May 1993.

Many have highlighted that "although women in many countries have struggled together with men for national liberation, at the end of that revolutionary struggle their position in society as women improves little as the era dawns" (Worku Zerai, Organising Women within a National Liberation Struggle: Case of Eritrea, 1994).

While this view is correct in one sense, it forgets the objective reality of the stages of the socio-economic and political development of formerly colonized nations. There are many contradictions embedded in the structures, systems and institutions between the people and the colonisers, between the different liberation movements that led the national liberation front, between the different classes in the society.

As a consequence, national liberation does not mean that all contradictions are going to be solved at one go. It is here that Fanon and Cabral adds sharp clarity the pitfalls of national consciousness without the implantation of class suicide.

Women’s struggle for freedom cannot be seen in isolation from the larger struggle for liberation.

Today, we will hear a talk that was given by Seble Tsehaye, Secretary of the National Union of Eritrean Women, USA, member of the Central Committee and member National Public Diplomacy Taskforce.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Listen intently. Think deeply. Act accordingly.

Sources: Worku Zerai, Organising Women within a National Liberation Struggle Case of Eritrea, 1994; Victoria Bernal, Equality to Die For?: Women Guerrilla Fighters and Eritrea's Cultural Revolution, 2000; National Union of Eritrean Women: http://www.nuew.org/

Image: EPLF freedom fighters. There is no independent Eritrea without Eritrean women. available here: http://www.madote.com/2017/03/nuew-national-union-of-eritrean-women.html

Saladin Muhammad argues in an article titled Black Workers for Justice, Twenty-year of Struggle, in Against the Current that:

“The national oppression of African Americans in the U.S. South makes Black workers in the South the most exploited section of the U.S. industrial working class. Black Workers for Justice [BWFJ] thus bases its trade union and political perspectives on the principle of the centrality of the Black working class.”

“The struggle against racism, for political power and self-determination for African descendant people are key aspects of this principle in forging the unity of the Southern and U.S. working class. BWFJ has tried to create an identity, confidence and political presence of the Black worker and trade union organization in the U.S. South.”

BWFJ believes that the struggle against African American national oppression must take on sharper Black working-class and internationalist features. It must put forward a perspective for, and be active in building, a strong rank-and-file democratic and radical labor movement in the U.S. South” [Saladin Muhammad, Black Workers for Justice, Twenty-years of Struggle, Against the Current, No. 101, November/December 2002].

With this, Saladin Muhammad, firmly situates Black Workers for Justice in the continuity and long arc of Black liberation movements that center the Black working class/workers, such as, but not limited to: Ad Hoc. Committee of Concerned Black Steel Workers; the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement; League of Revolutionary Black Workers, to name a few.

What you will hear next is Pt. II of our conversation with Baba Saladin Muhammad. Be sure to tap into Pt. I to pick up the flow of our conversation!

Saladin Muhammad is an organizer, theoretician, writer. He published a number of articles that explore issues ranging from exposing the structural and systemic racism in labor to ways to understand the interdependence of human rights and Black internationalism.

Saladin Muhammad is the co-founder and national chair of Black Workers for Justice and until his retirement, he was an international representative for the United Electrical Workers [UEW].

His praxis has been forged in Black freedom work for than three decades.

The idea is not to replicate, but I understand there is a path. To see that there is a way. A way – a genealogy...

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; and Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Listen intently. Think deeply. Act accordingly.

Enjoy the program!

Abdul Alkalimat writes on a multimedia project that explores the work of Saladin Muhamad that “our movements for social transformation have often fallen victim to the tendency to oversimplify the struggle.

Moreover, there is far too little self-criticism to learn from our “right” and “left” errors. This is particularly dangerous as we are at the beginning of a new generational awakening. We need to think about the past few decades of struggle by listening to those who have marched on and maintained a revolutionary perspective.”

Labor, whether force or extracted through coercion has been a consistent cause of struggle for African/a peoples, globally.

James Boggs, in a speech given at a Political Science Seminar in Atlanta University on February 17, 1974, argued that “we must be ready to recognize that as reality changes, our ideas have to change so that we can project new, more advanced aspirations worth striving for. This is the only way to avoid becoming prisoners of ideas which were once progressive but have become reactionary, i.e., have been turned into their opposite. The only struggles worth pursuing are those which advance the whole society and enable all human beings to evolve to a new and higher stage of their human potential”.

Expanding this assertion, Boggs goes on to suggest that “knowledge must move from perception to conception; in other words, knowledge and struggle begin by perceiving your own reality. But it must have the aim of developing beyond what you yourself or your own group can perceive, to wider conceptions that are based upon the experiences of the whole history of Mankind. The only way that anyone can take this big step of moving beyond perception to conception is by recognizing and struggling against your own internal contradictions and weaknesses. Of these weaknesses, the most fundamental and most difficult to overcome, as a result of the specific history of United States society [and I will add the evolution of the global racial capitalist system], is the tendency not to think at all but simply to react in terms of individual or ethnic self-interest” [Boggs, 1974].

Reflecting more on the praxis of Saladin Muhammad, Abdul Alkalimat asserts that “there are many theoretical and practical issues involved in the experiences covered by the life of Saladin Muhammad and his experiences in struggle. Saladin is a proletarian cadre of the revolutionary movement. He served as chairperson of the Black Workers for Justice for over 20 years. While being retired from full time union organizing, he remains active on many battle fronts including the Southern Workers Assembly.”

This is Part I of our recent conversation with Baba Saladin Muhammad.

Saladin Muhammad is an organizer, theoretician, writer. He published a number of articles that explore issues ranging from exposing the structural and systemic racism in labor to ways to understand the interdependence of human rights and Black internationalism.

Saladin Muhammad is the co-founder and national chair of Black Workers for Justice and until his retirement, he was an international representative for the United Electrical Workers [UEW].

His praxis has been forged in Black freedom work for than three decades.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; and Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Listen intently. Think deeply. Act accordingly.

Black Liberation and Social Revolution: The Life and Legacy of Saladin Muhammad

http://theblm.net/saladin/

The way we remember; the forces and institutions that nurture or place barriers on the processes of remembering are not without great contradictions and opportunity. All of which are directly related to the interdependence of legitimacy and consent…the terrain upon which a contestation of power is played out on a daily basis.

Understanding what is at stake in this contestation, is a duty and responsibility. It is science as well as an art. It is real and imaginative.

Mapping and following the continuities in genealogies of phenomenon, mapping the materiality of memory allows us to grasp an understanding of the interconnectedness of power, memory, & resistance.

To be clear the system and structures that prohibit, discourages, and/or award us to move away from mapping memory, to move on, to forget, to leave it in the past…have plans. And those plans have nothing to do with freedom nor liberation.

It is a strategy that uses concepts like race, class, gender citizenship, rights—all essential components to the maintenance of the myth of the nation-state, to distort and create memory.

Nevertheless, in the web of human history, the most articulate expression of a people’s humanity is found in the way they resist…the most vibrant platform that allow visions of the future to connect with now moments.

Just as the complexity and vast scope of oppression finds an expansive terrain to evolve with the suppression and distortion of memory, so too is the complexity and vastness of a peoples resist to it.

Accordingly, there are stories and necessary continuities that we must identify and once identified, we must map. We must create a platform to construct memory, not for the sake of remembering. But organized to understand where in the long processes of resisting sociopolitical and economic inequities inherent to the current global social order can we follow to their logical conclusions.

Today, we will present a conversation that AWNP’s Mwiza Munthali had with filmmaker Enver Samuel, director of Murder in Paris, which tells the story of Dulcie September.

Image: https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dulcie-evonne-september

Film/Take Action: https://murderinparis.com/home

The Erasure of Dulcie September - https://africasacountry.com/2019/08/the-erasure-of-dulcie-september

Labor has changed. Its production. Its definition. Its control. But one thing that has not changed are the parameters within which labor has been defined, value extracted and dehumanized – mechanized – automated – artificially intelligeized.

What does "labor" mean in a settler imperial world fortified by racial capitalist sociopolitical structures that maintain a social order that places the African/a worker, beyond the periphery of benefiting from their labor? What about decolonizing labor and labor movements?

What about a world without work----What are the ideological frameworks that ‘labor’ is using to attempt to construct the material realities of our current world? What does (or will) this world look like in two-years…and what are its implications for the African/a world? What are the implications for the Earth and now more than ever, the heavens—space?

Questions around black labor, usually pivot on the role of black education. However, most explorations are neither critical nor intellectually honest.

Today, Dr. Kamau Rashid joins us in conversation where we meditate on black labor and 'the white architects of black education'.

Our thoughts are centered on William H. Watkins work, the White Architects of Black Education: Ideology and Power, 1865-1954. In the White Architects of Black Education, Watkins “explores the body of ideas that undergird social, economic, racial, and educational beliefs about Black education in the U.S.: therefore, it is an ideological study.

His stated objective is to "investigate the ideological construction of colonial Black education by examining the views, politics, and practices of the white architects that funded, created, and refined it” [1-2].

Therefore, “colonial education in the South must never be confused with the educational agenda of blacks in the south. In fact, these agenda conflicted” [2].

The central question asks: How far have we moved away from these foundational ideas and their ideological grounding?

Dr. Kamau Rashid is currently Professor and Founding Director of the Urban Education, Ed.D. program at Northeastern Illinois University. Dr. Rashid earned his Ph.D. and BA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Arts degree from Northeastern Illinois University.

Dr. Rashid work focuses on African American history and culture, particularly on the inter-generational dynamics of African/a social critique, which includes an exploration and theorizing of W.E.B. Du Bois as well as contemporary African-Centered scholars and critical race theorists.

He is co-developing an oral history and archival project focused on African American social movements in the Chicago area from the 1960s to1980s with Dr. Richard Benson of Spelman College. And is currently working on Finding our way through the desert: Jacob H. Carruthers and the restoration of an African worldview as well as the critical theory of W.E.B. Du Bois: The Struggle for Humanity.

He has published a number of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and received various grant awards to support his work.

Lastly, likely most importantly, Dr. Rashid is active in a number of community organizations in the Chicago-area including the Kemetic Institute of Chicago, a research and educational organization focused on mapping, exploring and applying the ancient and contemporary contributions of ancient Nile Valley civilizations.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Image: Romare Bearden - Factory Workers - 1942

The range and scope of manifestations in the Black freedom struggle are varied yet connected by a common thread…it does not matter where you look, pick a point on the map of human geography, pick a geographical landmass or region -- the continent of Africa, the Caribbean or somewhere in Northern part of the Americas, you will find a common thread.

And that thread is the radical imagination of young people. You will find a historical path that reaches into the present. You will find the beginnings of a road built with vibrancy of young folk who envisioned a world beyond struggle.

SNYC

We can see the materiality of this fact in the continuum of African/a resistance. In 1937, the Southern Negro Youth Congress [SNYC] was created [We demand Our Rights: Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949].

Assembled in Richmond, VA, for the first Southern Negro Youth Congress were some 534 delegates representing 250,000 young people in 23 states, and an estimated crowd of 2,000 observers. They represented "sharecroppers from Alabama and Mississippi; domestic workers from Georgia…and every other representative of Southern Negro life." [We demand Our Rights: Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949].

SNYC lasted for 12 years, 1937 to 1949.

SNCC

On February 1, 1960, Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina launched sit-ins challenging segregation in restaurants and other public accommodations. SNCC was founded just two and a half months later on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ella Baker was the gathering’s organizer. [SNCC Digital Gateway].

On SNCC’s international dimensions, highlighted by Fanon Che Wilkins, in his article The Making of Black Internationalists: SNCC and Africa Before the Launching of Black Power, 1960-1965, were embryonic as “the founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the delegates declared unequivocally: "We identify ourselves with the African struggle as a concern for all mankind" [468].

To add more clarity, Miss. Baker organized the conference which led to the formation of SNCC “just three weeks after the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa” [Wilkins, 2007: 471].

I present this snapshot, paying attention to historical continuity in African/a student resistance to provide an impetus to engage in more intentionally and consciously mapping of the range and scope of the Black freedom movement.

Today, we present a conversation with SNCC activist: Courtland Cox.

While a Howard University student, Courtland Cox became a member of Nonviolent Action Group [NAG] and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He worked with SNCC in Mississippi and Lowndes County, Alabama, was the Program Secretary for SNCC in 1962, as well as the SNCC representative to the War Crimes Tribunal organized by Bertram Russell.

In 1963 he served as the SNCC representative on the Steering Committee for the March on Washington. In 1973 he served as the Secretary General of the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Tanzania.

Additionally, he co-owned and managed the Drum and Spear Bookstore and Drum and Spear Press in Washington DC.

In our conversation we explored: Freedom Schools; CLR James; Jamil Al-Amin; Black internationalism; Sterling A. Brown; scholars w/o portfolio; independent political parties; Sékou Touré; Tanzania; Marion Berry; and the Sixth Pan African Congress.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Image: Courtland Cox (second from right), Marion Barry, and others sitting-in at Atlanta Toddle House, December 1963, [https://snccdigital.org/people/courtland-cox/]

[produced & aired, 2017]

This past weekend over a 150, 000 people were in Washington, DC to protest and call attention to the ever-increasing violent reality of climate change.

The devastating effects are already being felt across the planet and can no longer be denied, despite the best efforts of those who choose to ignore the facts. And the continent of Africa is feeling every bit its violent effects.

The 2011 drought-induced famine in the Horn of Africa affected more than 10 million people, claimed 257,000 lives and cost over $1 billion in damages. The Africa Adaptation Gap Report by the UN Environment Programme warns that climate change could reduce total crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa by as much as 20% by 2070. Additionally, a projected sea-level rise in Tanzania of 70 centimeters by 2070 could devastate the port city of Dar es Salaam, its largest and richest city and a major player in East Africa trade, and cost the country about $10 billion in property damages and related losses.

Environmentalists warn that rising sea levels could cause severe flooding, submerge land and destroy African coastal ecosystems.

Africa World Now Project’s executive producer; international journalist and human rights advocate recently sat with activist Matheca Mawinda, Executive Director at Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and Cecile Ndjebet Coordinating African Network of Community Management of Forrest, to discuss this crisis in greater detail.

Next, you will hear a presentation on the Africa-China question from a symposium titled Africa and World in the 21st Century.

Howard French in his work, China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa estimates that there are currently at least a million Chinese living in sub-Saharan Africa and says that may be a conservative figure. Several countries alone (Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique) have a hundred thousand each. Others have fairly decent sized enclaves or Chinese towns, often of ten thousand people. Africans have said for years that the Chinese isolate themselves, that they don’t integrate, though French shows that there are numerous exceptions to that, especially when Chinese males have married African women and started families. There is little question, however, that often these enclaves have sprung up because in many places Chinese companies have brought their own workers to complete a specific project.

What is the role of China in Africa? How do we understand the implications of this role in the context of a 21st century global economy? What are the new social, economic, and potential political formations that are being produced from China in Africa? What about Africa in China? Africa has a long historical record of interacting with China…what are the contemporary possibilities of Africa reversing the influence?

After all, W. E. B. Du Bios writing in his 1947 work: The World and Africa suggests that Chinese ships traded directly with Africa from the 8th to the 12th centuries.

These and a myriad of other important questions come to mind when exploring the China-Africa question.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Palestine, South Africa, and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

[produced and aired, 2016...note...our production is getting better...: )]

In a 1968 in the March edition of Negro Digest titled, the Nature and Needs of the Black University, Gerald McWorter [Abdul Alkalimat] writes…and I must quote in its entirety here: “Revolutionary change for the liberation of a people from oppressive social structures is not the special function of one course of action, but, more likely, the result of several. And while education is generally hoped to be a liberating force on our minds and bodies, often it has been used as a debilitating tool in the interests of an oppressive society."

Quoting Kwame Nkrumah, from his work Consciencism, McWorter, compares the colonial student who is educated for "the art of forming not a concrete environmental view of social political problems, but an abstract `liberal' outlook," with the revolutionary student who is "animated by a lively national consciousness, (who) seeks knowledge as an instrument of national emancipation and integrity."

The university is alive for people in the world (including all of the socioeconomic and political contradictions involved), and so must meet the challenge of responding creatively to whatever needs exist now for those people…

I wanted to highlight this one article of a series articles that was printed in the Negro Digest from 1968 to 1969, primarily to show the continuities and salience of the questions that were overtly presented then.

To be clear, the center of this historically-bound, contemporary discussion with a long genealogy in attempts to solidly build responses to expanding notions of justice and equality in a highly racialized society still asks: What is the role, in this present moment, of Diasporic institutions in African world resistance? In part 1 of this series, we explored the intellectual praxis of Diasporic thinkers…

Today, in part 2…We will explore, more deeply, the ideas presented those historical conversations about nature, function, and role of the Black University with Josh Myers.

Dr. Josh Myers is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. In addition to serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and the editorial board of The Compass: Journal of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, he works with a numbers of community-based social justice and cultural restoration organization. His research interests include Africana intellectual histories and traditions, Africana philosophy, and critical university studies. His work has been published in The Journal of African American Studies, The Journal of Pan African Studies, The African Journal of Rhetoric, The Globalization and Human Rights Law Review, Liberator Magazine, and Pambazuka, among other literary spaces. His current book project is a history of the Howard University student protest of 1989.

Enjoy the program!

We are living in a time of great challenge and opportunity. Across the African world people are challenging their historically rooted contemporary conditions. The practical work of the long tradition of African and Diasporic freedom fighters has provided the frame work for these various manifestations of Africana resistance to find a way forward---to think, reason, and see that another world is not only possible, but absolutely necessary. The current sociopolitical, economic, and cultural organization of global society is truly not sustainable.

Amie Cesaire writing in 1950—in Discourse on Colonialism brings this notion to sharp clarity when he asserts that “A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it created is decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization…” (Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism: 31)

Thinkers and fighters such as Amilcar Cabral, in a 1972 speech during one of his visits to the US argued that: “An objective analysis of imperialism insofar as it is a fact or a “natural” historical phenomenon, indeed “necessary” in the context of the type of economic political evolution of an important part humanity, reveals that imperialist rule, with all its train of wretchedness, of pillage, of crime and of destruction of human and cultural values, was not just a negative reality. The vast accumulation of capital in half a dozen countries of the northern hemisphere which was a result of piracy, of the confiscation of the property of other peoples and of the ruthless exploitation of the work of these peoples will not only lead to the monopolization of colonies, but to the division of the world…” (Cabral, 1972: 57 in Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral).

How are we to understand this long tradition…that is finding material expression in the various movements around the African world? What is the role of Diasporic institutions, such as the HBCU? More importantly, as Vincent Harding once asked what is the vocation of the Black scholar and their praxis? I would expand this question to include what is the vocation of the Black and their praxis in relation to the entire African world?

I recently sat down with Corey Walker, Dean of The College and the John W. and Anna Hodgin Hanes Professor of the Humanities at Winston Salem State University for a wide-ranging discussion of the role and responsibility of the Black scholar in this current phase of global African resistance.

Enjoy the program….

Audio credit: Africa is a Country - mini-documentary - Shutting Down the Rainbow Nation - available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksgrJyOrd7A

Image credit: Rob Siebörger. The Rhodes Statue at the UCT-ground. Photo taken 28 March 2015.