| 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 | 
Latest News
No Current News
Designed and Hosted By FirstNet
PAN-AFRICANISM AND RENAISSANCE

PAN-AFRICANISM AND RENAISSANCE

22 MAY 2013

SIPHO MFUNDISI

Self-knowledge, as proposed by Alexander Pope when he said: “Know yourself; presume not God to scan,” is the first and most important thing that any living person has to pride themselves in.

Self-knowledge, awakens one to make peace with oneself in order to be content with what they have.

The spirit of the Renaissance is well noted in Psalm 137 when the Israelites were enslaved and kept captives in Babylon where in nostalgia they sat and wept when they remembered Babylon. It dawned to them that they have a place they belong to not along the banks of the rivers of the land of captivity.

In the same breath  in 1787, when Richard Allen, Absalom Jones  and others were humiliated while praying they came to know that even in bondage they have a place they can be proud of, Africa. It is for that reason that unlike many churches the African Methodist Episcopal Church was formed more out of sociological circumstances than theological ones.  They came to know themselves, put Renaissance into practice and set Pan Africanism in motion by forming a Pan-Africanist church for Africans while in the diaspora.

In their hour of need for collective self-reliance they came together. It is in the same context of the Renaissance or African conscisiousness that Richard Allen supported emigration back to Africa and Haiti.

Black Americans always yearn to be in Africa, even if it id for a visit albeit even for a worship excursion and it hoped that Preisdent Barak Obama and his entourage will have the same feeling when he touches down on African soil later this month

Renowned advocates of Pan-Africanism include leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Muamar Gaddafi Malcolom X and the academician Prof W E B du Bois.

In solidarity Africans will know themselves, be self-reliant and productive and refrain from being consumers of products from elsewhere. An All-African Alliance will empower African peoples globally and rid them of dependency. Pan-Africanism will lead to power consolidation on the mother continent.

United, African nations will have the economic, political and social clout to act and compete on the world stage as do other entities such as the European Union and the United States of America.

The Pan African Parliament should be a precursor to a bigger and more progressive institution. It should not be a talk shop where men and women go out to talk and end up at the Boulders Shopping Complex.

The African Union should have teeth and not end up as a place where leaders on the contintent  meet to  cut deals on how they can assist one another to put away wealth obtained in invidious ways.


Home | Manifesto | Constitution | Mission & Vision | Leadership | Background | Gallery | Calendar | Join | Contact Us | Speeches