Frank Talk on Alcohol

Written by Maleke Mahlomaholo

Please note that yours truly is also guilty of this !!

there are a few black projects a.k.a townships that i can recall straight away that in the old regime had what was then referred to as "bier-halls", the interesting thing about these "bier-halls" was their strategic locations as they were located right at the entrances.. you would never miss them even if you were willing to.

these were not by chance, they were by intent and hence design. alcohol was one of the great weapons used by the then regime in its anti-black agenda to disintegrate and disassemble the black community through the collapse of black families.

I read with interest the article that dealt with the SABMiller transaction of 1.4 trillion. what is interesting is the beer designed to target the black middle class whom in another article are said to be fuelling whisky sales! . .

Steve Biko's concern of the black middle class construction project as a negativity within the black agenda is manifesting in different forms including alcoholic ones, he refered to the black middle-class as a buffer zone between the poor masses and the upper class elite where the poor sees them as "progress" and hence see no need to revolt against the upper class elite. within the alcohol question, the black youth trapped in poverty within the black projects see the alcohol drinking and consumption in style by their black middle-class buffer zone as progress and a thing to aspire to!

the only difference between the current regime and previous regime is that, the former uses the methods of a "progressive party" while the latter used conservative methods of "bier-halls" right on your face. like Steve Biko mentioned once that "if the conservatives were clever enough, they would have long ago created a black middle-class like the progressives did" which could mean they would have created many alcoholics long ago!, "such that the world could count a few black people and say look: there is progress in South Africa while in the meantime 80% of the land still belongs to whites" with more black alcoholics production. .

the point of the matter here is that alcohol is introduced in nice ways into the black sphere nowadays, this leads to highly unproductive force of black people. .. all we do is to chill and drink .... or go do a 07H00-17H00 job and justify drinking through its stresses. .. we have turned traditional after tears events that had a particular meaning in black culture into heavy drinking sessions, we can't even wait for the funeral to end! .....

South Africa is ranked 4th in the world currently of highest drinking nation. ...

the current story of the negativity around alcohol is the Ntuli story..... a guy with a PhD who currently has nothing due to drinking. ....

Vuka black from that black out, get rid of the hangover. .... we have got work to do!

Mosia

The need to decolonise a decolonisation project

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

I was greatly concerned after listening to that student in the video I was tagged in attempting to explain what decolonisation of Science is ..... her somewhat limited views on scientific modernity cements the very need to decolonise the university/higher learning institution's curriculum together with her very mind! . . . Her fight together with the #FMF movement to decolonise Science is correct and i support it fully, but her views on scientific modernity as a product of western construction are greatly misplaced...

One of the simple reasons I support the decolonisation is that in all the science textbooks for example, the Greeks appears to be the only ones mentioned, credited and super-glorified. Take medicine for example, according to Edward Bynum (phD) in his book "The African unconscious: Roots of ancient mysticism and modern psychology" pg 104-105, the ancient Egyptians whom Prof Cheik Anta Diop has demonstrated scientifically through melanin tests to be BLACK people, were writing medical textbooks as early as 5000 years ago! He writes that "the most famous Greek physician of antiquity, Galen (130-200 C.E), was known to have studied in the medical schools of Egypt in the early centuries C.E in search of medical knowledge". So clearly Africans must be mentioned in textbooks in order to decolonise the textbooks without necessarily erasing the scientific content as it is also African anyway!

Examples of these medical textbooks includes Hearst papyrus, Berlin papyrus, the Kahun medical papyrus, the London medical papyrus etc which can be found in European museums! Edward again writes that "these medical papyri reveal that the Egyptians ..... had a rather sophisticated knowledge of Anatomy and physiology at least 4500 years before the studies of the cardiovascular system by the English physician, Harvey. The Egyptian approach to medicine resembled very much that of today."

Therefore, taking this into account, the question of scientific modernity does not appear to be a construction of the West! .... so to say that African science is to send lightning to people in order to kill them is in itself a colonial condition of the mind, hence science must be decolonised in order for Africans to see themselves as an integral and an important part of the scientific history and modernity together with its evolution.

Maybe explaining how is it possible for Africans to have a regulatory power over such powerful sources of electricity such as lightning must be made a subject of scientific inquiry within a decolonised curriculum!.... ... who knows, we could harness electricity for free ... lol

there are many examples from Astronomy, mathematics, philosophy etc in which African contributions can be located.

Our next project will be to decolonise Christ!

#DecoloniseScience

''Modern'' Capitalistic Materialism vs BLACK values

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

let me start off by quoting the great Bantu Biko as follows::::::::::::

“Material want is bad enough, but coupled with spiritual poverty it kills,” Biko continues to say that ''the effect of spiritual poverty is probably the one that creates mountains of obstacles in the normal course of emancipation of the black people.” unquote..

in view of this notion by Biko whom actually advocated for the need for Black theology...

I quote again from the works of Dr George James in his marvelous work ''Stolen Legacy'' as follows::::::::::::::::::::::

''The ancient Egyptians had developed a very complex religious system, called the Mysteries, which was also the first system of salvation. As such, it regarded the human body as a prison house of the soul, which could be liberated from its bodily impediments, through the disciplines of the Arts and Sciences, and advanced from the level of a mortal to that of a God. This was the notion of the ''summum bonum'' or greatest good, to which all men must aspire, and it also became the basis of all ethical concepts''. unquote..

the one man that I sincerely recognize his contributions to Africa and who was clear in-terms of the importance of the implications of spiritual poverty reference by Steve Biko is Thabo, even though he could have done more for BLACK people given his insights and historical position of power .. in any case, my view is that Thabo was in synchronization with the connection between the arts and sciences and lack of spiritual poverty by BLACK people , either by chance or knowingly, but that is immaterial.

it is important to note that the role of education which was composed of the seven liberal arts, and the role of educating the students in ancient African centers of learning was to liberate their minds/soul from the bodily impediments in order to for them to attain true spiritual consciousness and eternal happiness. In terms of the contents of these liberal arts as captured by Dr George,

''Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic were disciplines of moral nature by means of which the irrational tendencies of a human being were purged away, and he was trained to become a living witness of the Divine Logos.

Geometry and Arithmetic were sciences of transcendental space and numeration, the comprehension of which provided the key not only to the problems of one's being; but also to those physical ones, which are so baffling today, owing to our use of the inductive methods.

Astronomy dealt with the knowledge and distribution of latent forces in man, and the destiny of individuals, laces and nations.

Music (or Harmony) meant the living practice of philosophy i.e., the adjustment of human life into harmony with God, until the personal soul became identified with God, when it would hear and participate in the music of the spheres. It was therapeutic, and was used by the Egyptian Priests in the cure of diseases.

Such was the Egyptian theory of salvation, through which the individual was trained to become godlike while on earth, and at the same time qualified for everlasting happiness. This was accomplished through the efforts of the individual, through the cultivation of the Arts and Sciences on the one hand, and a life of virtue on the other''. There was no mediator between man and his salvation, as we find in the Christian theory''.

Having mentioned Thabo's recognition and understanding of this level of importance of African education and values, it was not surprising to learn that he was heavily involved in the project to rescue the Timbuktu manuscripts in Mali from decay due to environmental effects and the fact that they have been there for many years. The Timbuktu manuscripts are one of the most important evidence of the documented African liberal arts that were used to fulfill true consciousness and allow students to experience inner vision and hence higher levels of being.

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Now, in continuing along the lines of mental liberation of BLACK people and its relationship to their political liberation ... Thabo again comes into the picture as a result of what I recall from what Andile Mgxitama said when he gave a talk at one of the gatherings organized by EFF at UCT when he said, ''the one person he could never forgive was Thabo because he [Thabo] has read the same material he has read and knew exactly what needed to be done, he also added that he could not blame Jacob Zuma as JZ didn't know what was going on'' ....

This position by Andile became clearer to me when i read a Lecture given by Thabo Mbeki at the 30th Anniversary of the death of Steve Biko in 2007....

Thabo wrote as follows, and this is important:::::::::::::::::

''It would seem to me that three particular historical circumstances were central to the formation of Steve Biko as an outstanding leader of our revolutionary struggle and an eminent representative of his generation''.

For the purpose of this writing, I selected only the second of ''the three particular historical circumstances'' as Thabo refers to them...

therefore, Thabo continues to write that:::

''The second is that as Steve Biko came into his maturity, the national liberation struggle was in full retreat, arising from the banning of the ANC and the PAC, the destruction of the organised structures of the liberation movement, and the systematic decapitation of the movement by the arrest of its leaders and activists. Relating to this, Steve Biko wrote: “Since the banning and harassment of black political parties – a dangerous vacuum has been created. The African National Congress and later the Pan-African Congress were banned in 1960…Ever since there has been no coordinated opinion emanating from the black ranks''.

A critically important part of the strategic brilliance of the intervention that Steve Biko and his comrades in the Black Consciousness Movement made to re-energize our liberation struggle was to mobilize the black oppressed around one message that would respond to these three historical circumstances. In a manner of speaking, this meant that the BCM threw one stone to kill three birds!

But what was this stone, this particular weapon of struggle? Thabo asked and in turn answers as follows and he says:::::::::::::

Steve Biko wrote: “The philosophy of Black Consciousness…expresses group pride and the determination by the blacks to rise and attain the envisaged self. At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realization by the blacks that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Once the latter has been so effectively manipulated and controlled by the oppressor as to make the oppressed believe that he is a liability to the white man, then there will be nothing the oppressed can do that will really scare the powerful masters. Hence thinking along lines of Black Consciousness makes the black man see himself as being entire in himself, and not as an extension of a broom or additional leverage to some machine. At the end of it all, he cannot tolerate attempts by anybody to dwarf the significance of his manhood. Once this happens, we shall know that the real man in the black person is beginning to shine through…Various black groups…are beginning to rid their minds of imprisoning notions which are the legacy of the control of their attitude by whites.”

This one stone was the militant and uncompromising offensive to defeat what Steve Biko described as “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor, (this being) the mind of the oppressed.”

In the early days of the formation and development of capitalism in the United States of America, Africans were taken away from Africa in order to provide free labor in working the plantations to generate surplus money and also, they [Africans] themselves were treated as commodities that could be exchanged in the slave trade, thereby generating more surplus money for the white slave owners. It was out of this free labor and treatment as commodity of our ancestors that capitalism was birthed and expanded further because out of the surplus money generated from basically nothing, the Eurocentric industrial revolution and development was possible.

This is one reason why Karl Marx was quoted as saying: ''take away the African slave from America and America will be nothing''

In the process of enslaving Africans, their minds were altered in order to erase their Africanness and hence their essence. This was important to make sure that Africans would serve the anti-black capitalist agenda in whatever way even in the absence of the barrel of a gun! During the time of capitalist expansion and hence industrial revolution, new ways of manufacturing goods for example were required, therefore capital was used to build universities and centers of learning whose graduates would further advance the capitalist agenda of coming up with new and effective ways of producing more goods as the system expanded in order to make more profits. In turn, the graduates would be rewarded with money and material benefits of the earth, which essentially appeals to the mortal desires.

This whole material based expansion has determined the current capitalist modernity as we know it today, which is based on material consumption, prosperity defined along the lines of materialistic achievements etc. We see Africans today getting education in order to serve the Eurocentric industrial complex agenda, whose foundation of existence is the free labor of their own ancestors.

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Therefore, from the above we can see how central the role of a liberated mind of an African is.

Firstly, the education of an African was centralized around attainment of true consciousness and inner vision in order to liberate the mind/soul from the mortal bodily impediment and to ensure everlasting happiness.

Secondly, the political ideas based and centralized around a liberated African mind can lead to positive outcomes that favors the BLACK agenda and BLACK unity in the midst of this anti-BLACK world based on whiteness. Also, we saw that a liberated mind formed a cornerstone in the re-ignition of the black struggle in South Africa.

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Lastly, as Africans we need to interrogate the worthiness of material constructions vs the role of African centered education and how those are shaping our being as a spiritual people.

Mosia Motobatsi.... katse phoofolo ya thoteng!....

God bless....

The tragedy of a Black Marxist

Writen by Maleke Montshiwagae

the tripartite alliance between Cosatu, ANC and SACP is a clear cut practical example in the Mzansi case study of the crisis of black Marxism . . . their dependency upon pure Marxism fails them in dealing with both the local and international black question . . .

one does not even have to go deep into the dialectic development of Marxism in order to reveal the tripartite alliance' structural failure mechanism. ...

one only has to take note of the transformation of one of the hardcore black Marxists C.L.R James who like many other Marxists, advocated for the primacy of class analysis over race. James also believed that the appraisal of black self-determination was a reactionary act because it would compromise the internationalist worker's solidarity between white and black workers. ..

. ...
but following the debates in the Socialist Workers Party in which Trotsky objected that there was nothing reactionary in black self-determination because the negroes lacked the necessary cultural and historical basis to form a separate nation. Trotsky even supported Marcus Garvey's movement.

In fact, in J.Sekai's "the mythology of the white proletariat" he addresses the Labour aristocratic tendencies of the white workers who were more interested in petty-bourgeoisie interests and worked hand in hand with the white capitalist upper class to suppress black workers in order to keep them as the underclass. ... he indicates that in America the white workers were in a dynamic state in which they could acquire land at any given time, therefore they were never really a "true working class" given their dynamic state.... while black people were just plantation slaves workers who did not even form part of the white societal class hierarchy,... therefore they were the dehumanized to start of with.... therefore there was a clear vacuum between blacks and whites in which working class solidarity was an illusion. .. the black condition needed to be addressed as a separate issue by black people!

anyway, James was eventually driven towards the understanding of the black question and drafted a resolution on "The Socialist Workers Party and Negro Work" which recognized the validity of "black chauvinism" in view of the betrayal of black people by white communists, Democrats and Republicans and condemned the expression of racial domination as reactionary.

the SACP and Cosatu fails in my view to provide an ontological analysis of the black question as they continue to confuse a black men for a worker. .. they tend to interpret the basis for a black grammar of suffering in terms of economics similar to how Marx "universalized" human social development with economics as a base factor. therefore there tends to be an interchangeability between a worker and black person, hence jobs for black people are a focal point to them rather than the reconstruction of the dehumanized black being..

Even Lenin in his statements, he recognizes the non-reactionary nature of the colonized' self-determination proclamation as he sees it as part of a necessary force that will not be deterred by white race domination and its contradictions, and would contribute eventually towards a socialist revolution. ...

We are taught that in the cause of the development of capitalism, the upper class capitalists studied the vanguard movement and focused upon the importance of labor aristocracy as an important element to destabilize it by rewarding trade union leaders and supervisors with petty benefits in order for them to protect the capitalist interests, this we can see in the Cosatu and SACP tendencies as they are rewarded by the black capitalist bourgeoisie movement the anc....

therefore, on the one hand we have a trade union federation and communists fighting for a delusional working class unity that does not take into account the historical black societal development and experiences, while on the other hand you have them under control through labor aristocratic technique by the bourgeoisie black nationalists serving white upper class, which leaves the black people on their own!

........ . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . BLACK FIRST...

Racism manifesting as sex hunger over the oppressed black women!

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

Some time back I travelled home for a particular commitment and as usual, one ends up interacting at various "levels" with various individuals. Also, one gets exposed to the cold realties facing one's community and which makes one feel that yes, I have escaped this condition by the needle eye or by luck. I say by luck given the process one had to go through in order to attain a colonial education that would eventually give yours truly an access ticket to the eurocentric industrial complex, and hence a higher Labour value in order to make a "meaniful" material life, while our black sisters and brothers are left to cheap labour in the agricultural industrial complex.

Two of the individuals I got the opportunity to mingle with were two young black and beautiful ladies whom by virtue of their socio-economic status, the class project locates them elsewhere on the ground! But since yours truly has had an understanding of the need to commit class suicide as proposed by Amilcar Cabral, it becomes clear that ourselves as black people in our community are separated by virtue of our locations in the agric and industrial complexes beyond which we are really one black people. The material constructions important only to the physical mortal becomes a dirty source of division amongst ourselves as a black people, very short of even connecting us at spiritual and humane level characteristic of the African classic.

In the moment of all of this, the black women are left vulnerable to the sex thirsty white men in the agric. This sex question and thirst towards black women commodities by the white Baas, arising as a result of anti-black racism as power, was at the core of the narrative by these beautiful and courageous black women.
Essentially they were slaving the land of their forefathers as commodities of Baas themselves since they were paid close to nothing, living in appalling hostels and working to remove potatoes from the ground in the burning heat. In all these conditions, Bass had the nerve to make sexual approaches claiming to love one of the black ladies. How contradictory love can be?...if one is willing to let the one he claims to love, slave and labour the land while wanting to further burden her with sex. It appears as if Baas was confused here, confusing his anti-black sex power relations with love!....

It is again a reminder of how even black men under slavery, were exposed to sexual abuses by white elite women purely because they had the power to do so, it is reported that the white Patriarchs often left their women at home as they were not allowed to participate in many activities.

Therefore these elite white women became sexually frustrated and by being in the master power position, they exercised that power through sex upon black men to pleasure themselves.

It was indeed painful to hear these horror stories in 2016, the condition of Black women exacerbated by lack of access into the industrial complex in the absence of education.

Our sisters will continue to appear as sex beasts and objects in the eys of the agric Baas..... if nothing is done

))))))In support of #ForBlackGirlsOnly(((((

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

it is only through history that one is able to put the present into context. .

to set the record straight, Africa really only became Patriarchal through the external influences and interaction with Europe, or what Cheik Anta Diop referred to as the North cradle. and this fact can be demonstrated quiet readily. . i wrote a bit about this in my one article titled "A multi-layered complexity of the echoes of Sarah Baartman".

yesterday when I read and really listened to Panashe Chigumadzi around the #ForBlackGirlsOnly question it was painful to hear how black women still have to explain to the white world why it is necessary for them [black women ] to gather and reflect on their experiences and to find ways of how to move forward as black women in accordance with their own terms. White women sees this as exclusion and they argue that they, together with black women should work together to resolve the issues of women! Panashe makes an interesting point similar to Steve Biko's take on the question of whites who says they want to "help" black people, she says that "nobody says we want in into your[black women] oppression, but as soon as we stand up everybody wants to join"

it was interesting that even black men and their related liberal feminists had issues with #ForBlackGirlsOnly, some even suggesting that the name should be changed to something more accommodating to white women. These black men are a reflection of the impact of Patriarchy upon matriarchal Africa, a question of anti-black power reflex, and these Patriarchs, together with their liberal feminists do not understand that black women do not share the same gender with white women in terms of their historical experiences in space and time dimensions.

One must remember that for example during slavery, Patriarchal white men treated their women as jewels who needed to be protected and who exemplified high levels of purity and perfection and was close to being an angel. So all the dirty work was therefore left to a black slave woman, in fact according to Edward Bynum [phD ] in his book "The African unconscious", these Patriarchs saw black women as "sexual beasts" who were always hungry for sex due to their uncivilized, primitive and promiscuous nature as theorized by them [Patriarchs ], hence the perception that white women where oppressed too as they were not allowed to participate in certain activities, but it was because of this "protection" by the Patriarchs! So because of this sexual view of black slave women, the Patriarchs when they came home stressed and often drunk from their gatherings, they would unleash their stress and sexual hunger from drunkenness to black women slaves as she was viewed as always ready for sex whatever the circumstances. in a nutshell, a black woman was reserved for dirty behaviors of the white Patriarch, hence Patriarchy is a discharge of anti-blackness.

this is just one example, another quick example is of a black nanny in the free state in South Africa whom some Patriarch white boere "Bass" used to sleep with until she got pregnant with his child. When this child was older while living in the farm, he used to watch how his white father and his wife and their children would play as a family while he and his mother had to face the daily struggle in the absence of his father. This is an example in which the dirty sexual desires of Bass are discharged to the black nanny who is eventually left alone to raise a child while Madam continues to enjoy the family bond and structure while remaining "protected"

All of these are examples of anti-black power reflexes appearing through Patriarchy. so the black Patriarch in a similar way as a white Patriarch under slavery regime protects the interests of white women while seemingly ignoring anti-black oppression of black women.

so the liberal feminists and their related black Patriarchs must allow space for #ForBlackGirlsOnly independent of white interference, because the argument of including white women into black women issues in the interest of the rainbow nation is flawed, because as can be seen, they do not share the same gender given their historical experiences because as one scholar argues, gender is not pathological but rather a function of time.

........... Mosia Motobatsi. ..

#ForBlackGirlsOnly. .....

I hope we can see how this thing of a woman must stay at home while a man goes to work came to be within Africans! ...it was never our thing. ..