Pretoria - Scholars, traditional healers and leaders of institutions have praised the first annual Black History Month commemoration in South Africa as the first step towards removing the blinders from African people.
According to them, this will also contribute towards the reconstruction of the African renaissance.
The commemoration of Black History Month was held at the Freedom Park Museum in partnership with the Royal House of Haramanuba, under the theme “Until the lions have their history, tales of the hunter shall always glorify the hunter”.
Freedom Park CEO Jane Mufamadi said Black History Month was an annual observance originating in the US, where it was also known as African American History Month.
Mufamadi said the observance began as a way of remembering important people and events in the history of the African diaspora.
She said although it had long been recognised by governments in the US, Canada, and more recently Ireland and the UK, countries such as South Africa had only just adopted the observation to reflect on the journey traversed, and their struggles from colonialism, apartheid and freedom.
“It is an annual commemoration to understand black history going beyond stories of racism to spotlight black achievement. In our case, it is also celebrated in February the month in which Nelson Mandela was released from prison.”
Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, the spokesperson of the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, said African people needed to be sanitised from certain ideas and perspectives that dominated the world, and which had subsequently infected all of Africa and its institutions.
Yehuda said if anything African people had to be honest with themselves that the war, struggles, and controversy continued and that these were not peaceful times yet.
“The adversaries of our people count on us being unconscious, they count on us having put our faith and hopes in political and economic solutions even though they have no intentions of actually bringing about a social system that will create parity and equality.”
As a result of this, he said there had to be radical transformations not just economically, but spiritually too.
“We need to acknowledge where we are, and in doing so we have nowhere to go but up. We had to get to rock bottom and be truthful with ourselves that this is not how we are meant to live.”
In referencing the attack on Ukraine by Russia, Yehuda said such news was an indication that the former world was breaking apart.
“What is happening with Russia, Ukraine, Nato, America, China and Taiwan? It is telling us that their world is breaking apart, and if we continue to pursue their ideals and models for politics, governance, education and economics we will simply reap the same results they are reaping right now.
“It is the end of times biblically speaking, but it is not the end of the planet but the end of that unrighteous world system that we are witnessing now.”
Director of the Institute of Afrikology Dr Yaa Ashantewaa Archer-Ngidi said the learning of black history had to be intentional, but most importantly had to include the youth and young children.
She said commemorating occasions such as Black History Month was important as there remained many Africans who still did not believe that “we are the great empire”.
“We have been subject to a story of victimisation, that every time we open our mouths we talk of apartheid as if that was the first instance of victimisation. Apartheid is the baby of the victimisation because we now know the first real and intentional invasion happened 1 000 years ago.”
As it is, she said it was important for African people not to look to reinvent the wheel as former leaders such as Marcus Garvey had left the blueprint behind for Africans to use for the way forward.
“My biggest hope and inspiration is for the African man, women, and child to tap into their divine self, how we think, what we look at, how we deal with our hearts.”
Pretoria News