Place Name or Geographical Nomenclature: Changing the Macrotoponym AFRICA
And why Cote d’Ivoire /Ivory Coast should be translated as Côte d’Esclave / Slave Coast.
by
Dr. Viban Ngo
There is a retailing clothing corporation in Europe called the United Colors of Benetton operating in some 120 countries. If they are advertising their products they shock to the core their clients or would-be clients. I cannot conjecture if their sales increase in consequence. Once, they posted on bill boards in Western Europe and North America a picture of a dark skin African breastfeeding a rosy (white) child as a way of advertising their sweater. http://beibysrabbithole.blogspot.com/2010/10/united-colors-of-benetton.html
That advert invoked days of slavery where Negro (African American) nurses would not suckled their babies first but would those children of their ‘rose’ (white) mistresses. That was a modicum of slavery in the days of slavery in deep south USA. What do you call such happening today and being documented for you? I heard some readers talk of barefaced exploitation and provocation of dark complexioned Africans or peoples. Is it modern day slavery or are we still reminded of the exploitation of one of our kinds in the 21st century?
I am not writing on geographical nomenclature of Africa to shock or provoke my readers beyond words at the United Colors of Benetton but to inform base on philosophical and scientific reasoning. I would want my readers to rationalize, ratiocinate and not to react out of sentiments as I have done so to put this in black and white before reacting. The reason is what we all articulate could be documented for posterity.
I would also appreciate it if kind readers would translate this particular treatise into French, Hausa, Russian, Portuguese, Swahili, West African English (Creole) and Spanish for all and sundry to decipher. My rationale is that I do not want us to swing to and fro as a pendulum as some interlocutors / debaters want us to do without making headway. We tend to insinuate from comments made that we are still thousands of years away from being made into a book learned continent. Many of you could compare our advances in literacy with those of India. I see that India is a lot developed and what is dragging it behind is lack of rigid family planning akin to their next door neighbor, China. The veracity is they have the audacity to invest in Africa. I do not know of any Nigerian apart from South African companies setting up businesses in India and China. The least they do is to supply raw materials. Ask why not finished commodities?
Africa is last in most scientific advancement due to no fault of theirs and that is no excuse that they cannot advance and even outdistance those who had been thousands of miles before them in the trail of industrialization if at all there is anything like that. If Africans are apparently not economically and industrially advanced, it may be because they are complacent with their present status quo and their perception of advancement is completely different from those of their onlookers from other continents. It may be because Africans still build or aspire to build their heaven, Elysium in some extraterrestrial zone in the life after this whereas others believe that their heaven is on earth. Malcolm X in his book (1965) The Autobiography of Malcolm X with the Asssistance of Alex Haley, London: Penguin Books, 512 p highlighted this point. If others are way ahead, it is because they have perfected what they took from their mother continent, Africa and not that they make different superlative commodities than Africans. I will go straight to our topic for today, a quest for the change of macrochoronym AFRICA to what some persons might like to call authentic place names.
Before we proceed we would like to clarify certain jargon. A specialist in place name studies is a toponymist. He specializes in the scientific study of place names, choronymy or onamastics or what are known in some quarters as cartolinguistics or geolinguistics. . When we are interested in nomenclature of smaller areas we call this microtoponymy as opposed to macrotoponymy that studies regionyms, names of countries, large geographical regions and continents. In our case, we are interested in the macrotoponymy of Africa. That has been covered by me in my work I am citing for the third time in this forum, Origins of African Place names: An Introduction to toponyms in Cartography and Politics in Africa, Ottawa: Biaco Publishing Inc. I wish the person who suggested the change of African place name, what may sound like an academic gymnastics or jingoism would have perused me work particularly chapters xix and xxii. It is true that if there are certain changes, as one writer pointed out, such as unification of Africa as a single country that might call for a new name. If this work have been read, plenty of hassles and perchance waste of time would have been saved. Our attention would not have been diverted from the urgent task of development we must handle if we do not want to be re-colonized for a second time by aliens.
One theme that I have treated among many others is the choice and applications of geographic place names. I have emphasized on the vital need for a name chosen to be the outcome of a common consensus. Leaders in these fields are the UNGEGN (Unesco) who attempt to ensure that geographic nomenclature are standardized, in whatever language they are rendered for easy communication. In the case of Africa
in toto, it is suggested that the African Union committee of place names look into this matter if it is not to be dogmatic. If one is not been formed, it should as it is needed now and will be in the future. If changes of geographical nomenclatures are to be accepted without grudge, they have to be done by democratically elected, equally represented and level-headed members of a place name committees who are experts in the field of onamastics.
The UNGEGN organization had come across cases where majority communities tended to dominate minorities to the extent that their languages and hence their geographic place names are suppressed or completely annihilated. This happens when two nations or communities come together and their cultures are sort of clashed. The dominating one tends to suppress the minority ones without taking into consideration their feelings and historical or psychological affiliations to their names that are being wiped out or adulterated. They are part and parcel of their culture and the moment they are wiped out, they interpret that as their language and core of their culture being erased. Even when the new community that had newly joined the smaller one had got points as the names they want to get rid of being shift names or mistaken names, the minority communities still feel bitter and often interpret those actions as assimilation or blatant domination.
A bunch of politicians do not have the right to stand up and erase the names that have been in one region of the country because they feel that it is their duty to do so. This is interpreted as dictatorship and that does not augur well in a civilized and democratic world. It is for this reason that Cameroon Republic that annexed Southern Cameroons, or West Cameroon State and changed the name Victoria to Limburgh or Limbe is not taken kindly by the annexed state of Southern Cameroons, aka Ambazonia.
“The revolutionary political process n 1981led to the historic Port Twn of Victoria founded by Rev. Alfred Saker, the focus of national and international attention in 1958 on the occasion of its centenary celebrations being quietly renamed ‘Limbe’, when comparable Francophone monuments names after French colonial heroes have remained untouched. Southern (West) Cameroonians had not quiet recovered from the shock caused by this act, when by Law No. L84,001 of 14/02/84 the United Republic of Cameroon was again quietly replaced with ‘Republic of Cameroon,’ the name French Cameroon assumed at independence in 1960.”[Anthony Ndi, 2005: page 312- in his book Mill Hill Missionaries in (West) Southern Cameroons. Nairobi: Paulines Publication Africa.]
The reaction here was acrimonious as the recent change of appellation Provinces to Regions in the very country whose senior officials are considered in Ambazonia as proconsuls who are there of their accord and not as wished by Southern Cameroonians. They can afford to do what they are doing as they are considered as an invasion forces that are not democratic.
Let me reiterate, changes of names could be done by anyone but that is not allowed in a truly democratic nation state. It is because such place names have been recorded in many documents (maps, gazetteers, atlases and charts) and a mere change of them has to take into consideration several factors. They have to think of the cost of changes to the government and individuals, the map makers not only of the region concerned but in all the establishments of the world, jurisprudence and the psychological effect of the people in that locality. The mere change of Cameroon Republic’s appellation Provinces to Regions made all atlases that incorporate this country obsolete. Alterations of certain names are taken by some communities as removing their ancestral homes and throwing them away. When names are changed without a common consensus they are interpreted by the changing authorities as being arrogant, undemocratic and looking down o the communities they once designated and such do cause bitter feelings and war in some cases. There is not way you could go to change Istanbul to Constantinople and bullets will not fly. The reasons are that the Turks were defeated by the Christians before Constantinople was imposed and now that they are no longer under the Christians from Rome, they see no reason why they would have to live under imperialistic names. They have all the rights to change the names. Similarly, given opportunity, Limbe or Limburgh could revert to Victoria thereby the moment Southern Cameroons independence would be restored.
The name Victoria has historical underpinning and tells the world that historical and even present links that Southern Cameroons once had or still have with Great Britain. If Cameroon Republic that had its independence from France still maintain French names of their streets, monuments, why do they feel that they can change English names in Southern Cameroons aka Ambazonia without tangible reasons other than assimilating Ambazonians in their governance that they do not want to be a part of it. If there is any reason to contradict my statement, let there be a referendum now in the Southern Cameroons whether they would want to have their lost political independence they achieved on October 11, 1961. The vote for immediate independence would be overwhelming as what we recently saw in the Southern Sudan. There is no way or any block that could have halted the Southern Sudan from being with North Sudan or Sudan Republic where in the past they were being treated as second class citizens. If you doubt what I am saying since the independence of Sudan from Her Majesty’s Government of the UK, how many Southern Sudanese (Equatorians?) ever became head of State of Sudan? Not a single one of them. Similarly, there is not a single Southern Cameroonians who had ever and will ever be the president of Cameroon Republic. The reason is obvious; they are considered as moronic second class citizens with a different culture as testified by outbursts recorded in media in this country. Where the French and the English speaking Africans of this region meet there are ever clashes. Many will climb the pulpit and point fingers but what I am stating is the naked truth that is made from close observation, participation and past documentations.
Exceptional burlesque Cases and beyond names
Having brought the above illustrations, there are certain place names in Africa that are considered derogatory and anachronistic and might have lived hitherto owing to the naivety of the peoples they designate. This will lead me to draw another example from West Africa, namely IVORY COAST or COTE D’IVOIRE. Let me reiterate, I have in the past stated that its translation was and is still standing for SLAVE COAST and that is preposterous in the 21st century. I am not sure why that name is still maintained. My interpretation is that since this forum is exclusively in English, citizens of that region in West Africa still called SLAVE COAST or rightly Côte d’Esclave has not been able to read debates in the forums or have been distracted by their internecine war presidential ascendancy. Those nomenclatures that shock are burlesques. There is no society without any of these. In the Cameroon we still have a name of a village Bangonngwana which stands for a country of slaves. In France, we have a funny name like Condom. For many of us who associate this term with French letters, rubber to be worn to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, we are appalled why such a name designates a town in SE of France today. We forget that such a name predated our present condom that should imperatively be the first vocabulary of` a sexually active teenager. The name of this town is therefore not anachronistic. No matter how appalling it may sound to some readers, it may be there to stay unless the denizens of this town by a common consensus decide to change it. This goes for the name Ivory Coast or Coast of Slaves I have suggested to be changed to Songhai for reasons I have advanced in my work and in forums.
Similarly Africa cannot just be changed because a firebrand scholar is feeling that the continent of Africa had to be changed by Africans as others were of the opinion that the Indians of America (First Nation Peoples) ought to give the name they would want their continents to be known. I once heard some Francophiles crying that the English language was suppressing their language. My reply to the head of Francophonie was that one does not learn a language for the sake of learning but for the remuneration such knowledge would bring one. How does the change of Africa that had been known since time immemorial ameliorate the economic state of Africans today? As above stated, it could come to fruition if fragmented African states decide to amalgamate to form a single country. That might necessitate a new macrotoponym. That is the practical essence.
Many of you bear European, Judeo-Christian and Arabic names because of your religious beliefs, and the unproven belief that when you assume such names your inferiority complex would be positively changed and you would be accepted by those who once upon a time looked down upon you as inferior sub humans. Furthermore, what you believe awaits you because of such beliefs and assumption of alien names is the life after this one on earth. Have those who once upon a time downtrodden you accepted you as equals? Are you better off economically because you are called Mohammed, Isa and not Kwesi or Okonkwo or Wirba or Swane, or Diop that was in your tribes or kingdom millennia before the Arabs and Europeans returned with their imperialism in your continent? Again do you see your past reasoning strong enough for you to dump your authentic, meaningful and beautiful African names? Do you know that three quarters of Africans bear foreign names? Are they aware of the fact that they are killing African languages and cultures softly but surely? When people call your Hausa name, and not the apparently enforced Arabic names some passionately defend to death, they are sidelining Hausa and promoting Arabic. Fanatics will not sympathize with this as it may is bunkum to them. Naïve persons do not think of this as they accept imposed inferiority of their languages and cultures vis-à-vis other languages and cultures that emanate outside the continent of Africa. I would not like to go into history as inciting Africans to abandon their foreign beliefs (see my reaction to President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo in my blog) but I would like to be known as the one who told Africans that they could welcome foreign sciences and technologies as the Japanese did without necessarily abandoning their Africanness. I would like to be reiterating that you could be a Christian without necessarily dumping your Africans names, philosophies and cultures. Gentiles were accepted once baptized. If you could accept others, why do they expect you to change before they can accept you? How many White Southern Africans are known by the Zulu, Xosa , Shona and Ndebele names? How many speak those languages ever since their fore parents reached that sub continent in the 16th century?
Let me not zigzag from the mean topic in this section of burlesque names. In the USA, there are many such names. One is Intercourse found in the USA. The word has several meanings and we call this in English grammar disambiguation. It will be recalled that the French students are backward in some scientific fields because by the time they translate latest scientific papers published in America or the English-speaking worlds, they are late and by the time they have them in France they sometimes a year old. The reverse is true of getting innovation technologies published in French journals in the English speaking communities. Some French establishments are aware of these shortcomings and insist that synopses are published to in English. The Dutch Government circumvents this by ensuring that their students learn English at primary school level so that they are able to read the dominating scientific reports in English. Let us not go far. Rwandan officials were smart to adopt English. In Asia the Chinese and Vietnamese are doing this too. That is a different topic.
This idea of getting scientific reporting fast accounts for more Dutch and German students being more bilingual in English than their counter parts say in France. Having made this point, once more I should not be misquoted by someone that the French education is mediocre. There are more French scientists in French than scientists in all of Africa combined. As small as their population is vis-à-vis the entire continent of Africa, they are far advanced in scientific research than say Nigeria that has got thrice its population. They are a nuclear power and the only country in Africa that can come near France is the Republic of South Africa. [It should be mentioned here that when it comes to nuclear technology, it is a guarded secret as it is not to the best interest of everyone if terrorists lay their hands on].
Not to digress again, in the days of slavery and slave trade, European slave traders could buy black of white slaves. The black slave was actually an African person from the Sudan, Nigritia, Guinea (Aguinaldu) or Western Africa and the white ivory was actually ivory tusk. The first black suffix designates real slave and the later tusks. Therefore we will be stupid or phlegmatic to insist in the 21st century to call ourselves SLAVE COAST REPUBLIC / REPUBLIQUE DU COTE D’IVOIRE. This is an appellation that would turn William Wilberforce, Jacob Clarkson, William Pitt and other abolitionists in their graves. I am not the one to tell Africans what would happen to them if such were to occur.
I have suggested a list of names including Songhai, Bandamia, etc, in my book that could be taken by President Alassane Ouattara and his entourage to save us from this opprobrium. They should make sure that it is debated and not a mistaken name as Abidjan the place name of their economic capital.
Agree with our previous interlocutor/contributors that Africa has more pressing needs than to be bothered with change of its regionym in macrotoponymy. Although one of our contributors has stated that Africans are more educated than the Chinese and India, they are still very poor and technologically backward. To me, Africa is the least developed continent economically irrespective of masses of natural resources and virtually free labor supply. It still has the appalling infrastructure when compared with India, Asia and South America that got independence from European power around the same time. If you want to disagree with me count how many Africans are in Diaspora and how many strive to go and work in Europe and North Africa to the extent that many lost their lives while crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean Sea. Is it not a repeat of what happened during the trans-Atlantic and trans-Sahara slave trade? We call this brain drainage, write copious articles and books about it yet nothing has ever been done to address it. Without mincing our words 9 in 10 spinsters sounded in the Cameroun Republic dream is to go to Europe or North America so as to get married to a Whitemen. The reason is not that the Whiteman is good at making love; it is because he would alleviate their economic status and those of their extended families. Is that a tangible reason to get married? There is nothing in them call love even among their kinds. What does Europe offer Africans that Nigeria cannot? Why has the issue of economic migration never been seriously addressed by those erstwhile provinces of France and Britain that turned over night to pseudo nation states or banana republics? Is this not a pressing issue that should be addressed than the place name fiasco?
Economic Potentials
To get ourselves distracted from pressing economic debacles by this issue of place names and naming is not intellectually challenging and convincing enough. All we need to do is to look for ways to harness the River Congo to produce electricity that could be exported to Europe and Asia and stop bandying words on place names whose etymologies some of us dabble based on conjectures. If electricity from the River Congo cataracts alone is tapped, the D.R. Congo (Rightly should known as “Bula Mutari”) will never go tasty and hungrey for the next two hundred years unless some natural calamities were to come from no where and destroy its hydroelectric stations or divert the river to thin air. That could trigger industries that would attract investors and create jobs and take us away from the temptation of building nuclear energy plants as Mali is on the verge of doing. Imagine Somali after Said Barre having a nuclear electric plan. Not one would be safe. That attempt should be thwarted in Mali that has unruly men who attack and kidnap people for ransom moneys. It should be persuaded to desist from that suicidal action before they become like Pakistan with a nuclear capability that is the nightmare of India, Israel and America. It will be recalled that Africans are still suffering from the effect of the test of nuclear /hydrogen bomb blasts the French tasted in the 1950s and 1960s in the Sahara. Before we welcome certain industrial innovations, we have to ponder upon them and ask experts as the Germans, Japanese and the Russians.
Does it not bother us that in the 21st century eight out of ten Africans would want to emigrate to Europe and North America to where there are favorable economic climates? It is a shame that we sit and watch our leaders fowl our economies with wanton corruptions, plow in nothing and we fervently believe that we could ameliorate ourselves and our continent by rendering our badly needed services in foreign climes? Since the 1500 AD Africans have been exporting their kinds to other parts of the world by vice or voluntary means. How has 600 years of exporting African to the Americas helped Africans and African Americans? To me, it had brought humiliation and stinking opprobrium. If Africans are not careful they could be re-enslaved by the new comers from the east who come to stay and not to return to their original homes. The terms of settlements should be clear as this broad day light and should be cast in stainless steel that should never be remolded. ‘Naturalize and plow back your profits in your new homes and not ship them to your old homes as once did the Indians in Uganda who after living in Uganda for one hundred years still called themselves Indians. Did we doubt it when Idi Amin Dada took the draconian measures of driving them out? It was because Ugandan Indians had not accepted to settle in Uganda as their homeland. To them it was a market where profit was obtained with impunity and taken to be invested home India where it was safe. Were they right? That is a different topic.
Lesson from the Japanese and secret of Industrialization
The Japanese threatened the very industrial core and power of Europeans because they learned European secret of industrialization. If we are not motivated to learn all these where do we think we are heading to and how are we to be respected by the industrially developed nations if we are not going to talk to them as equal from the position of strength? Is the right stratagem to invite foreigners to sell them chunks of our lands and they employ us to work on them instead of employing them to work for us in our lands? Is the right attitude to exploit all hard woods and export them to be stored in Europe and we are left with nothing? I learned one thing while working in Zimbabwe, that African Zimbabweans were scared of managing their affairs. They had been used to European Zimbabweans managing for them and when they were given that sanction to do things for themselves, most of them were petrified. It was for this reason, hitherto that European Zimbabweans were skeptical and often commented that they were aware of the fact that they had taken over their (African Zimbabweans’) lands but were doubting it that they could use the lands properly when they lacked capital, managerial skill, and the technical know-how that would make good farmers. I did not have to go far but to look at the swimming pools of homes Rhodesian abandoned and Africans took over. They were used as dust bins and were they were used the water was brackish, no money to buy alginates.
The Cameroon Development Corporation and no lessons for the indigenes
The Cameroon Development Corporation was and still a foreign concern in the Cameroons. It existed since the days of the Germans and changed hands with the English and now the French and a handful of adventurous locals. True it created jobs and all Africans could do in those plantations since their creation was to harvest crops with machetes and parceled them for Western European marts. Africans were and are employed as laborers and after 55 years of working hard daily they have not learned any technologies that could ameliorate their lives or help them set up their plantations. Sadly they returned and still do hitherto to their villages as they came, naked and even more moronic as they left their backward villages. They could not open farms or get pensions and there was no multiplier effect. What was the essence?
What is wrong with us that we cannot man our own lands and produce what others want? Must it be produce by those whom we are supposed to produce and sell to them? Then we will be confined to the state of slavery in our own lands for the foreseeable future. Are we not tired and do we forget that we were once used and are still used before our political independence in some quarters to buttress the Western Economies when ours were and are still in shambles. If there was forced migration during the times of slavery to produce goods for Europeans and if today we still do not reason and still feel that the best way is to still move over to Europe to work for them for stipends when we could have full pay for our productivity in our African homes, then slavery and slaver trade had never left us or taught us a single lesson. It is for this reason that when people are crying of sincere industrialization we are crying over spurious change of place names. Where therefore are our priorities? Let us in Africa invent a car that will only run on oxygen that is as common and produce all that the Asians, the Americans, Europeans and the rest of the would badly demand; we would not go about trumpeting to the world where we are and what we are but our clients would come to us with open arms asking for where we live. They would not need roads and names. Can we for one minute leave the alehouses, she-beens, chicken parlors, games and ponder upon Cheikh Anta Diop’s 1974, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State. West Point: Lawrence Hill and Company, 125 p? He outlines what we could do to be industrialized and be partially self sufficient and garner the respect and grandeur that was once Africa. I have mentioned one, the harnessing of the mighty River Congo to generate hydro electricity for our use and export.
You will see that before the name Africa was used to stand for the continent that is located south of Europe and to the southwest of the Middle East, various names were used to regions of Africa and they all stood for black. Starting from Western Africa are familiar with, we have Nigritia, then sometimes known as Guinea, (Aquinalda) then we had Western Sudan, Ethiopia and in the good old days we had Egypt. They all stood for black, designating the general color of the soil and sometimes that of the inhabitants as those of the Sudanese and Darfurians who had been blessed by nature with dark skin to cover them from the cancerous radiance of the sun. They never and do not suffer from cancer of the skin as do some of us who are light skinned. Therefore, the black melanin that gave some names in Africa is a blessing which when some brothers and sister want to shade them as if they were rotten sloughs because they had mistakenly taken the Caucasian fair complexioned skin as the prototype. I laugh at their deadly naivety. How does the change of complexions to mimic that of the brothers who had been made so by the temperate climes ameliorate the economic climate of Africans? How does it take away their miseries? How does it take away the pandemic HIV/AIDS related pandemic illnesses that nearly surpassed malaria in Africa? We could indulge in academia, philosophies but we have to keep on reminding ourselves of where we are going to and if what we are doing are positively changing our economies positively.
Fantastic Sounding Names
You see that some states have fantastic sounding names but their total wealth is not up the wealth of tiny Luxembourg and the municipality of Monaco in Western Europe. If Amerigo Vespucci reported the founding of America by Christopher Columbus and if a reader mistook his name Amerigo and wrote it America as the continent that were founded. What is wrong with this so long as it is not derogatory? For those of you who have done choronomy or onamastics or cartoglinguistics, America is a typical mistaken regionym or macrotoponym. The users know that it was mistaken name but dare not suggest that it be changed. Africa was not a mistaken name. It was a shift name, Whatever its etymology, it cannot be changed but those who strongly want to call it the poorest continent on earth peopled by economically less dynamic persons can call it what they like with their tribal names. I hope they have to seek its standardization from the United Nations Groups of Experts on Experts on Geographic Names (UNGEGN). If this has been entrenched and permeate the entire world and now the Indians who are the
prima occupantis of these continents came up and exhume some names that is the authentic name of the America could it be accepted?.
The Africa you all claim is no longer peopled by the original inhabitants of Africa. They have all emigrated to Europe, Asia and the Americas. There is no place on earth that is not inhabited by Africans. The difference why they are not looking like Africans that we know of or what some of us erroneously want to insist we define as an Africa is because the climate changed them in the course of their emigration. They have to adopt and adapt or else were faced out from the face of the earth.
Africa circa 1901
It was wrong in the pass to associate Africans with blackness as Africa was not and is not still peopled exclusively by black or dark-skinned complexioned peoples. There are rosy Africans or Caucasians who were in Africa before the first immigrants of Europeans left Europe after the so-called discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. The Arabs came in the 7 AD and you cannot strictly tell us that they are not Africans as the Boers or other Europeans settlers in Southern Africa. They still retain their rosy complexion what some Caucasians erroneously call white. Where do you classify the Fulani, the Chao Arabs, Arab, and Barbarians in the Atlas range, Tutsi, peoples of Chinese origins, and Indians? They are there and will be there forever. Even before the so-called categorization of man by color started by those who had put the erroneous white above the scale of human categorizations, particularly accentuated during the days of slavery and slave trade, everyone was the same. You will remember that the Popes of Rome had had four truly dark complexioned African Bishops of Rome. With the coming of color as the criterion for categorizing men on earth for their worth and even their IQ, some fair skinned Caucasians had since then and hitherto denigrated the man of African whose skin is dark or darkish to the bottom of the race scale and that is the
casus belli. A time is coming, as it is now among the young Caucasians and Africans when they will totally believe that the color of the skin is another cloak men wear and that inside they are all the same. They are smarter than their predecessors and know that color had been given by climates and the nature of their landscape for what biologist term protective coloration that is also common among some creatures.
Therefore the prefix white, yellow or black to designating any person on earth is wrong. The most we can do to distinguish ourselves where it is imperative is to state that he is an Asian, She is an African. An African can be an Asian and vice versa. There are European Africans who are Africans even mentally and they are known as Africans. In this case, African could be what we used to be called in the past as white, brown, black, and yellow skins and not exclusively black as was erroneously called in Europe and America of the pass and by racists of today who are naive or uneducated minorities.
After Benetton: http://beibysrabbithole.blogspot.com/2010/10/united-colors-of-benetton.html
Can you differentiate the color of a person from his blood and heart? (After Benetton)
[The name will be in which of the official languages of Africa? Is there a standing or an ad-hoc committee established that could see to this? When the UNGEGN or ICA calls for a convention how many Africans nations bother to send in delegates even when being held in Africa? Something is awry in Africa or with Africans. They have been used to aliens doing things for them and when it comes to working for them that dependency syndrome or paradigm is not easily shaded. Colonialism was wrong. How many Africans are prepared to rectify the damage done by the colonialists? ]
Dr. Viban Ngo.
vibango@yahoo.com
Appendixes
From: Jonathan Reynolds
_________
From: "bradley borougerdi"
University of Texas, Arlington
This is a very interesting debate. I have enjoyed the article so far
(though I am not finished yet), but it has occurred to me that the Native
American case is very similar. The various cultural groups in the
Americas before the oceanic revolution were named Indians by Europeans,
and scholars have tried to get rid of this misnomer but their efforts have
largely failed. I would image that if we deconstruct the naming of things
in general (along with other cultural groups as well), we might find that
a significant amount of mishandling has occurred through time (in fact,
this might even be a part of the naming process). The naming of America
is a case in point. Shortly after Waldsemuller published the first map
with America as the name for the so-called "new world," he realizes that he
gave too much credit to Amerigo Vespucci, but it was too late and the
name stuck. This might just be my overly cynical nature, but I think that
changing the name will not work because it is too entrenched in the psychic
of many individuals and groups (even if most of them are not from Africa).
In fact, I wonder how many times a name change of this magnitude has
actually been successful in the past? Nevertheless, it is important to
highlight this discussion to demonstrate the falsity of history and the
tendency humans have of categorizing people and culture into large groups
without justification and for the purpose of satisfying their own agenda,
and for that reason alone the article (or what I have read of it so far) is
beneficial. I am just a PhD student working on my comps with one of my
fields as African Diaspora, but I am going to add this article to my list
of comp readings.
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 13:09:09 -0400
X-Posted from H-NET List for African History and Culture
From: Jonathan Reynolds
_________
From: "Asar Imhotep"
No Affiliation Provided
Greetings Dapo
Thank you greatly for your reply to my article. Your insight
is valuable and has been considered. I do feel, however, that you may have
not have actually read the article per some of your statements in the last
email. About 2/3 of your article was about race and race wasn’t a factor
in this discourse. A matter of fact, I stated clearly that an
identification based on race is reactionary. Thus why I rejected Wole
Sonyinka’s suggestions for a new name for Africa (Abibirim
and Abibiman “black land, black nation”) because it was based on the false
taxonomic notion or race which would put Europe at the center of our
ontology (given we’re only “black” in relationship to them who are
so-called “white”). I have a strict biological
conception of race and the folk taxonomy as expressed by the layman
doesn’t fit this standard for which I categorize human beings or which
traditional groups actually classified themselves.
Secondly, I agree with your statement on identity, at least
in part, that it is based either on historical shared unities or perceived
future shared ideals and goals. Your assumption that the name chosen
doesn’t reflect this, I feel, is mistaken. The term used Malela (malelela,
Egyptian <= mry) is found in practically all African language families. It is a Pan-African term present in the historical consciousness of African people. For the term to be so wide-spread among African language families suggest that at the formation of this concept, the ancestors of those who carry the term belonged to the same speech community: thus sharing the same culture. This can be demonstrated for thousands of African words and is why African linguists argue primarily for a single super language-family (see Rkhty in Karenga & Carruthers 1986, Diop 1954 and Obenga 1993). As stated in the article, the suggested name was chosen precisely to remind Africans of their ancient historical unity which can easily be demonstrated by examining African languages. It is in recognition of this ancient cultural unity (as demonstrated by numerous works) and the clarion call by Cheikh Anta Diop in Black Africa: An Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State, that this proposal was made as Africa is slowly moving towards a unified sovereignty. In the spirit of self-determination it is imperative that Africa picks a destiny (a name) that best reflects its intentions, history, gifts and vision. Given the above, I took it upon myself to answer the call of African researchers who 1) called for a unified African state, language and culture, and 2) called for a redefinition of what it means to be “African” (in terms of identity) given that this name was imposed upon the people by Europeans without any feedback or consent from the people themselves or any knowledge of its meaning and historical context. I did not in the article go through any historical and cultural examples of indigenous naming processes. I discussed that in my book The Bakala of North America. But in general, naming conventions on the continent are aligned with destiny, the goals to be achieved by the person (or community). I only suggested a name within the tradition of indigenous naming conventions on the continent, using a modern variation of one of the most ancient names on the continent. The name is one of the most ancient names for a land mass (the Nile Valley) that we have on record and this process is no different than modern Ghana naming themselves after Ancient Ghana that was located further to its west. The same spirit is present in this endeavor. As Cheikh Anta Diop noted in Civilization or Barbarism (1981): “For us, the return to Egypt in all domains is a primordial condition to reconcile African civilization with history, to be able to build a corpus of modern human sciences, to renew African culture. Far from delectation with the past, a look towards ancient Egypt is the best way to conceive and build our cultural future. Egypt will play in a newly thought African culture, the same role the ancient Greco-Latin played in Western Culture” Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 22:00:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Wendy Wilson
------------------
I mostly regret entering the fray about the naming of Africa!! I would
like to suggest that list members not assume that contributors have little
experience in Africa, or less than their fellow contributors. I can also
assure you that you are reading much more into my reply than was intended.
Surely, people of African descent in the Americas are Africans and named
themselves as such as early as the eighteenth century, when they began to
lose specific continental ethnic affiliations because of slavery. And
people from the continent are also Africans, with a very particular - and
their own - local histories. On that level and in many subtle ways we are
all Africans. But if we can accept James Brown was from Georgia we should
accept and appreciate Fela Kuti was from Abeokuta - that doesn't hurt
anybody!! Distinct and lively cultural streams from the same source.
On the other hand, naming one development challenge- as I did - is not
the same thing as declaring that challenge as exclusive or even the most
important, and should not be read as such. Again, I suggest that some
colleagues reflect on the difference between excellence in debating, which
has its own merits, and exploring scholarly possibilities and new
information. We cannot talk with each other if each exchange becomes a
retort and exercise in "most black" or "best Africanist." To my mind, this
degenerates into the sort of style now popular in the Western press. We
should have some respect for each other. One would hope that on this list
we share at least a basic respect for the education and experience that
people bring to the exchanges. Let's not resort to the superficial "break
the other person down" that is so rampant in the American press.
I speak several African languages and will not go further than that, here,
to demonstrate that I have some understanding of continental as well as
diaspora (old and new) cultures. Of course it is wonderful that the AU has
made affirming statements about the African Diaspora. However, I argue
that respect is critical and I suggest that personally I would not go to a
Peulh Futa and tell her that we can call Labe, Adamawa! I would not tell
a Tiv that I want to rename their territory in Nigeria, or a Mo sotho that
they can call their land KwaZulu. You are speaking of Cheikh Anta Diop but
bul fi essayer jaay titre; bul dem cikao bopp nityi! I suggest
re-listening to Fela Kuti in Colonial Mentality and Original Sufferhead.
We should respect the fact that the majority in Africa want to participate
in forming Africa's future. Is there a future for Africa, whatever it is
called, if the millions who live in the continent have no say in their
future? That is what I am saying. There are many pressing issues on the
ground, I am sure you will agree, and the name of Africa is not the
immediate one most people who live there are facing.
Wendy Wilson Fall, PhD.
Associate Professor
Chair, Pan African Studies
Kent State University
Kent Ohio 44241
office tel 330 672 2300
cell phone 330 357 2165
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 15:05:49 -0400
X-Posted from H-NET List for African History and Culture
From: Jonathan Reynolds
_________
REPLY 1
From: "Asar Imhotep"
No Affiliation Provided
Greetings Chambi
You asked, “Imhotep don't you think (re)buying Diop's
call far below to look back to ancient Egypt vis-a-vis the
West looking to ancient Greco-Latin is also reactionary?” I do
not think so. He wasn’t saying that just because Europe does this,
therefore we should. What Diop is talking about is the natural tendency
for human groups to look at their ancestors of historical memory for a
sense of self and direction. Europe was just an example out of many. This
practice would happen whether Europeans enslaved Africans or not.
In terms of ancient Egypt, I like to look at it as the BaMalela utilizing
their own traditions and collective history as a resource and not simply
as a reference. What we are discussing here is a practice in which the
indigenous discovers and bring forth the best of their culture(s), both
ancient and contemporary, and using that as a foundation to bring into
being models of human excellence and possibilities
to enrich and expand the lives of “African” people. Egypt is simply a
cultural anchor and a historical starting point for which to forge a new
reality. This has always been an “African” practice.
Ancient ciKam (km.t, GebTS (Egypt), tA mry) is the earliest
example of a “Pan-African” society. In ancient times the drying of the
Sahara became the major challenge for the inhabitants living there. As
water and food became scarce, large scale migrations began to happen in
all directions. A large amount of these people went into the Aegean and
the Nile Valley. What we know today as Ancient Egypt was the result of the
coming together of various African cultural groups who forged an identity
and created a civilization that lasted over 3000 years. As a result of
this process they named themselves in terms based on the shared
philosophical evaluations of the person. Such
self-definitions were rmT (Common Bantu: luntu, rumtu, lome, romi “man,
human, divine beings”), gbt (Amarigna GebTS), and km.t (ciKam, tiKam,
“land ripe, well cooked, mature, ready for human and spiritual
development, sovereigns” [see Asar Imhotep Ogun, African Fire Philosophy
and the Meaning of KMT]) to name a
few.
Africa is once again moving towards a federated union of
states (Egypt was a federated union of nomes) and once again the challenge
is how do we maintain cohesiveness once unified and what is the goal of
our union? Like any corporation, the name chosen for the entity reflects
the essence and the goals of the corporation (and the people who govern
it). The question is, “Do we seek external sources for our identity and
reasons for unification? Or do we search within ourselves for direction?”
The latter is tradition for which this discussion is based.
_________
REPLY 2
From: "Asar Imhotep"
No Affiliation Provided
Greetings Windy
I thank you for your insights. I would like to respond to
your response by asking at what point did African-Americans relinquish
their rights to engage in public discourse about the collective “African”
identity? Are we not “African” people? Is there any truth to Malcolm’s
assertion that “a kitten born in the oven don’t make them biscuits?” At
what point did we stop being “Africans?” Is the “African” in
“African-American” just there for aesthetic purposes? This is not a
suggestion from an outsider looking in, but from a living Sun (son) of the
(African) Soil whose lineage traces to peoples in Mozambique.
While we lost the individual ethnic identities as a result
of the holocaust of enslavement, it was the African-Americans, people of
the Caribbean and in South America who first embraced the term “African”
(although “given” this title by colonizers as they had no alternative
names as a result of a loss of language). This is evident in things like
the African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Lodge of Freemasonry,
etc. African-Americans have every right to engage in this discussion as
any Amazulu, Igbo or Dinka. The “Africans” on the continent did not call
themselves as such until recently as they still had an individual ethnic
identification.
A case in point, when I first presented this paper a year
ago to another email list, a Dr. Obododimma Oha of the University of
Ibadan, Nigeria responded and was very interested in the concepts
discussed in the paper. He directed me to an article he wrote titled
“Being African Without Knowing It” (which you can read here:
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Opinion/5527418-184/shibboleth_being_african_without_knowing_it.csp).
Here he echoes the same sentiments as expressed in my paper. He discusses
how his grandmother had no consciousness of being “African” and how his
conversation with her made him question the whole African identity, and
more so its MEANING. Ultimately this is the question that has to be
answered: “What does Africa mean” (literally) and “Does this name
accurately reflect the collect gifts, history, vision and purpose of
‘African’ people?”
When you present yourself to the world, you present to the
world you as the personification of excellence. You present to the world a
high paradigm of human possibility and human achievement; or as Jordan
Ngubane would say, an example by which we present “new more satisfying
dimensions for being human.” It is this sense of EXCELLENCE for which I
suggested a name for African-Americans: BaKala. Ba (they, them, people) +
Kala (the sun, vitality, maturity, the divine, excellence, etc.) is what
our ancestors sought to present to the world and encouraged their children
to live in and grow into. This term
kala/kale/Nkala, etc., is cognate with the ancient Egyptian name for their
confederacy km.t (Tshiluba ciKam, l > m). When the Egyptians defined
themselves as the rmT n km.t, they said we are the “People of Excellence”
(Luntu-n-ciKam). This theme was kept up in another name for Egypt which is
tA mry (Dya Malela) “land of truth, justice, love, fraternity, friendship
and righteousness.” Again, the underlying theme is EXCELLENCE and it is in
this tradition, using “African” cultures as a resource, for which the
suggested was proposed. It is interesting this term Kala, in reference to
excellence, in a recent discussion with Dr. Mubabinge Bilolo (Philosopher,
Linguist and Egyptologist), he informed me that he is completing a paper
where he is suggesting a new name for African people (nkale) as well. As
we can see, this issue is important to many people.
The continent is asserting its sovereignty in various ways
(culturally, politically, economically, etc.). As African people are
seeking to unite in various arenas, developing a new identity is part of
this process. As my article and the article cited above attests, many
“Africans” are no longer satisfied by being identified by foreign
evaluations of the person. This conversation does not only include
continental Africans, but those in the Diaspora as well.
_________
REPLY 3
From: "Dapo Ladimeji"
No Affiliation Provided
Wendy
you have been watching too many Aid adverts! The liberation of Africa from
apartheid costs $billions ( and thousands of lives) ... the income of many
african states is in $billions... the pictures of the poverty of African
Americans in America that came out after the Tennessee flooding was every
bit as appalling as scenes shown from africa... money wise african
americans need to help themselves... if african americans wish to help
africa then political activity is best and forcing the US govt to assist
africa would get more resources to africa than a charity run among african
americans... the greatest assistance of african americans to the
liberation of south africa was political...the pressure on US banks to
stop lending to apartheid south africa... intellectuals are important
...ideas rule the world in the long run... the anti intellectualism of
some african american activism is self defeating... 'most of them cannot
read' ..this is both literally untrue and irrelevant as in an oral culture
education and cultural and political transmission is not primarily based
on written texts so that unlike in US it does not follow that if someone
cannot read they cannot participate in the culture and politics... in any
case the largest numbers of illiterate people are in India and China not
Africa... and India and China are not in need of assistance from african
americans..
Actually your statement "I would find it odd for
> intellectuals in Africa to get together to discuss how I, or African
> Americans, might be re-named." is far from obvious.... I think that AU
calling the the diaspora a fifth region of Africa and thereby allowing
members of the diaspora to call themselves simply African is an
important step/issue.. as is the movement to stop talking/writing about
'slaves' and rehumanise the people by calling them 'transported
Africans'...is also important..' Fanon famously wrote that he did not
care if someone could prove that Plato was in dialogue with African
philosophers of his time because the issue for Africa then was to
fight... he was simply wrong... the intellectual fight is every bit as
important as the political and military...
Finally, I have severe doubts as to the true identity of asor imhotep
..his original essay was in the form of an autodidact but his reply to me
was the stylistic manner of a US/European academic full of tropes,
elisions and circumlocutions that were absent from his original essay and
all attempts by me to find his identity have failed... there is a risk
that he is a hoax...
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