Re-Enactment of African Civilisation towards heightened Collective Consciousness

Introduction

Unlike peoples and nations of other continents, critical mass of centrifugal forces and push factors are simultaneously making life unbearable and ejecting Africans from their homelands. These unproductive forces arrived and consolidated from outside over the past 5 centuries under the superiority of weapons. Weaponisation of humiliation and life-deprivation since then accelerated 2 centuries ago unleashing savage destruction of nations and lands. The resultant instability have placed majority of Africans in intergenerational survival mode. This is preventing the centring of critical revitalisation and refreshment of foundational African worldviews, indigenous meanings and the essence of collective being and becoming. This is the subject of this piece.

Dehumanisation Incorporated

There is no denying that unity, solidarity and stability are scarce values to Africans at home and abroad. It isn’t as if these and more are strange and rare in African lived experiences and consciousness, rather it reinforces the weight of its priority patently suppressed by unproductive forces. The testimony of this hollowing out of peoples can be discerned in 2 questions – If European version of modernity is good, why is Africa a regressing “beneficiary”? If Christianity is life-giving, why does it accompany death to rampage the continent? The 2 questions validate industrial-scale epistemic and physical violence meted out to Africans by Europeans via colonialism with its current iterations overseen by Africans. Curiously at no point did both questions diminish and eliminate African agency to inquire, dispute, debate, critique, dissent, resist and argue alternative narratives.

To say that a people or nations have no history, philosophy, theology and civilisation reveals the author/speaker as the true patient of ontological deprivation. Furthermore the toxic author/speaker remains irreversibly on the lunatic fringe. Having written that, the sustenance of negative notions on Africans feed from the illegitimacy of neocolonial leadership controlled through an imposed, foreign and adulterated system. Given that these leaderships are disconnected from African peoples and institutions, they operate like captured entities in full submission to their remote controllers to deliver imposed targets, dependencies and poisonous qualities. These are anti-peoples in all aspects. Politics, religion, education, economy and etc are all compromised by legitimised alienation, exploitation, marginalisation and industrialisation of poverty. A pathetic celebration of unjust structures!

Miseducation for sale

Most education investors know fully well that a person’s foundation is shaped in the 1^st decade of existence. This is complemented by secondary fine-tuning prior to the 2^nd decade. What is evident is that in both religious and government places of African learning, the core and essence of what it means to be African including language were and are deliberately eliminated from curricula. By so doing, inferiority and negativity of African values and heritage were cultivated to maturity. This is called civilisation stripping (for reconfiguration of collective consciousness). Devaluation, dehumanisation, depersonalisation and dehistoricisation! One can only become on what is inserted in their being! You don’t give what you don’t have hence most Africans keep looking outside of themselves and up to the north with ignorant satisfaction. Epitome of self-alienation! Hence African education systems produce mostly tools, objects and manipulated agencies.

Authenticity, mystery and divinity that underpin African consciousness and worldviews since remote antiquity were justifiably eviscerated. The ugly campaign is unaffected by the growing evidence of hollowness and monstrosity of imposed frameworks. Why then should there be surprise at intergenerational instability and uncertainty? How many African states have stress-free inter-administration transitions? How many African entities bar families/communities are older than 2 generations? Why should ontological disconnection be justified and solutions sought in foreign systems, despiritualised structures and individualist/elitist concoctions? No amount of primary, secondary and university learning will plug existential gaps inserted by African miseducation that spawns inferiority and negativity. Only a radical and comprehensive unlearning and relearning of true African foundation is the solution.

Radical Alternative toward Dignity

First of all, humankind began in Africa. African core is mediated by 4 values; family, community, learning and religion in a place. These qualities and more have enduring and deep life-giving impact over millennia. The first 2 delineate the locus of being and existence in the collective without depersonalisation. Mutuality and sense of belonging rhyme in peaceful co-existence in a place. Learning is an integrated, dynamic and holistic process of knowledge co-creation and co-utility from birth to the grave. Its focus encompass spirituality, civilisation/history and technical/disciplines. 

Research, critique, acquisition, innovation and creativity are embedded. Holistic and integrated non-universalist, non-hegemonic and non-proselytising (theocentric) religion is the metastructure holding everything together. Divinity, mystery and the Spirit (God) are tangible and known devoid of speculation and duality. Religion mediates praxis/practice in all aspects of African being and existence with abundant evidence of the Spirit permeating all things. This has serious implication as all things are derived and legitimised by it.

Dynamic transmission of rich developments over time in diverse situations across the continent is testified by indisputable historical records and archaeological evidence. Communication technologies now offer previously unavailable access to artefacts, patterns, relationships, trends, books, translations, maps, images and records. The histories exist and are present in the peoples and nations, so what is desperately needed is a renewed impetus of reappropriated epistemology that speaks and live in holistic embodiment in the peoples. African values are unique expressions of universal body of knowledge and they echo goodness, beauty, dignity, integrity, love and excellence. They are crowned by their origin and dynamic resourcing in the Spirit, mystery and divinity.

Africa is good, Africans are good, African civilisations are excellent. African pride can only flow on confrontation with evidence and openness. Armed with truth embalmed knowledge, dynamic transition from being to becoming is accelerated despite structural impositions and dominance of false narratives. Until an appreciation of African intergenerational knowledge disconnection between the past and the present by colonialism is effected, repeats of error will not stop.

These evidence impose huge responsibility on Africans today to move beyond externals, excuses and uncritical articulations. Deliberate and intentional rejection of false narratives and stereotypes is inevitable. These are untruths strategically inserted to reduce peoples and nations, for the same peoples and nations to stay reduced. Like-minded persons and groups are invited to share, reflect and discuss materials for new knowledge.

Larger groups are capable of developing frameworks and durable intellectual infrastructure for acquiring, retrieving and hosting events that bring African richness to wider audience. African-American communities have unblemished and resourceful leadership in this department. It is impressive that many African migrant communities are investing huge resources in this direction. Some of them have even moved into a new intellectual form of community-intellectualism where intellectuals are embedded in and renewed by mutual knowledge co-creation and co-production. These innovations and creativity add immense value to collective consciousness. Pride in collective origin and shared heritage ascends!

The next level determines true independence and genuine sovereignty in the world-system. African states must genuinely invest in African civilisations in order to ground their legitimacy, reconfigure their status and enrich statecraft for collective interest. On this point history is king. There is no future without this strategic initiative wrapped in authentic historical awareness and civilisational re-conscientisation. African states can only gain true legitimacy when they connect deeply to the people embracing shared past and dynamic present undergirded by ancestral knowledge and refinement of ancient wisdom from antiquity. Unity is the testimonial, enduring cohesion the evidence. Effectiveness of foreign items/ideas are worthy only after thorough quality-assurance of their fitness to the collective foundation and share consciousness. Africans everywhere are duty-bound to protect their core, essence and dignity rather than plead to be accepted by others on the basis of presumed inferiority, negativity and dehumanisation. 

Conclusion

Each African exists with a unique identity nurtured in a community embedded in shared heritage and collective consciousness of patterns, relationships and trends drawing from shared rich past. No African deserve to apply for the right to be or to become. Such regressions are always imposed by unproductive forces in the name of politics, economy and religion for collective erasure, profit and death. This has been African lived experience for a long time. Only Africans can expel this ugliness for the dignity to stand tall, proud and beautiful in collective consciousness that they truly are good and have been good since the dawn of time. Critical supporting data, information, intelligence and knowledge are available for encounter, internalisation, enrichment and result-oriented action.