What is the real definition of Decolonisation, and we MUST Decolonise our minds.

[Music] decolonization and [Music] judging there is a very Brad it differs from others so it could be that we still don't have the full understanding of what actually is deiz decolonization or what do we mean decolonization yeah um as we say in B Society the oldest human soul is the bur to soul and the battle including the colonization uh it's always been about the Battle for the soul of the B well when we speak of decolonization really we're talking about h a deliberate act and a move to overthrow H foreign ideas Concepts and principles hold over the colonized which is us and and every aspect of our life so now mainly where do we start with decolonization the first point it's education because the education that was given to us was a colonial education was a education that was designed to make us amable to colonization yes yes so so therefore we have to begin there and and there is a whole lot of um history to that for one if you look historically Cambodia Vietnam Laos was colonized by the French um Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch uh Egypt by the British and all of these places but when these people uh when they deol when they moving out of colonization they changed also the language they stopped using the language of the colonizers yes while on the contrary here in Africa we counting better than them we're counting 60 years of Independence but we have maintained the language of the colonizers and hence we having Africa still divided in terms of the anglophone with the Africa that speak English the Fran the Africa that speak French better than the French the lusophone the African that speak Portuguese Angola mamb K ver and all those areas and the Germans the Germans were in Namibia they were in Namibia but then they were replaced by the buas today when you go to uh from that resolution of United Nation uh when they then place it under the bu and then it become Southwest Africa before they call it Namibia today when you go to Namibia majority of the people in Namibia they speak Africans yeah you know so now the fact that we did not change the language we continue to the point that we colonize our mind to believe that speaking a perfect English is a mark of intellect intelligence Mark of intelligence it speaks to how educated you are we had examples of the former president jaob Zuma he will be a laughing stock because sometimes he can't sometimes he can't say that the numbers can't see the numbers and yeah he gets ridiculed for that but actually everybody ignoring the kind of work he's done exactly so now the the countries that were forly colonized like us they changed their um their languages and and they become as Innovative as the west and actually they proven that industrial civilization is not um exclusively European M look at China yeah you know Korea Korea although it was colonized by the Japanese but then after decolonization it developed its own its language yeah and developing a language is not a mystery you know developing a language actually in the past 100 years there are three communities that developed their own languages and others they FasTrack it in a space of about 20 years mhm M mhm the buas here yeah the whites who were made here yes African yes the the Hebrew the modern Hebrew MH and the Bahasa the language of Malaysia has all changed in less than 100 100 years period um let's talk about the buas the Anglo bu War which they today when they want to be politically correct they call South African War to a great extent of course the South African War but it was a war of two tribes of the Europeans the British and the buas and the one of the main reason was that the British they disliked the lifestyle of the buas they wanted to change it completely through the policy of Alfred Milner so Alfred Milner had this policy of anglicization yes of the boas it did not like their behavior and so forth the resistance started from 1804 when Britain introduced the abolishing of slavy and one of the thing people don't really understand and recognize is that the buas before they subjugate Us in the second form of slavery they had the first form of slavery they participated in enslaving Africans so they did not like they did not like the Abol the British idea of abolition AB slavery so so on one hand they're fighting they're resisting the abolishment of slavery but on the other hand they wanted to maintain their own bu culture which the British did not like at all so the first war the first Ang bu war was in 1880 to 1884 and then the second one which they usually refer to it as the second Ang war was 18 was like um uh uh the 11th of October 1899 to 31st May 1902 MH what the the famous Eng war and that war it immediately followed by the Treaty of f they signed the Treaty of f where they Incorporated the bua and the bua then began the process of standardization of Africans and 1910 there was then a formation of the Union of South Africa by 1913 the buas have already developed Africans and standardize and intellectualize it and begin to apply at primary level schooling by 1918 they were using Africans as a language of the University MH by 1925 it was used as a parliamentary Language by 1933 they were already printing the Africans Bible yes so you see the small the short period of time yeah yeah while apate itself because now apate then gave them a state power 1948 the the National Party took over and they rule South Africa 1961 they do away with the monarchy South Africa in 1961 31st may become a republic so from 1948 to 1994 it's a short period of time of people standardizing their language intellectualizing their language and operationalizing yes complely now what do we mean when we say intellectualization of our languages like we talk about we mention it at one of the conversation of bource society about the intellectualization of our African languages we mean that the language should be used we should be able to use our language to educate anyone from kindergarten yes to University level yes and we should be able to use our language for all areas of social existence science yeah um economics technology technology and all of that now people one time I think we talking about somebody I think commented on Tik Tok and say and what you going to call metamorphosis that's is that's how simplistic our people get right yeah but did you ever ask yourself or how did the Chinese do do it yeah how did the Indians do it how did the Indians do it because they were also colonized by the British yeah the Philippines the Philippines were yeah but they doing it everybody's doing it everybody's doing it and they have names for everything including metamorphosis and civilization and so forth now to say which is what our Elite our educated Africans keep on giving us an excuse to say well first of all a English it unite us you know so we need and this is where cognitive dissonance kicked in 76 we're protesting against Africans this is now you look at the the irony of the whole thing that we want to dump Africans for English we're not saying or exactly that we said we said in English that we don't want Africans the language of the oppressor we are being oppressed as if English is less of the language of oppress while the English went and not only oppress us oppress almost half of the whole world yes so now the irony of the 1976 is that the same buas MH who were forcing Africans on the African children of so of South Africa basically of the South Africans the same was couple of years back they were resisting the British forcing English over them yes so they had the same struggle now the same people who did not want their langu foreign language Colonial language imposed on them they're the ones who are trying to impose Africans on us now it it brought us to the the the the the whole thing that on one hand you are having us using one Colonial language to reject another Colonial language we're using English to reject Africans we even say yeah English unite us all we are able to all communicate in English in South Africa zul the truth of the matter is even South Africa more than most African countries South Africa has the infrastructure the conceptual basis for developing one language our languages are easily if you can speak one of these you can speak all can speak all three and speak one of them can speak all of them I seen the vendor and and in limo crisscrossing each other's language like that you it's very rare you find a vendor people who can speak a language or or k you understand so we have the basis more than anybody else as as the B languages are we are a linguistic Community they are related and we have similar wordss so it is very it can be done if we had a political will yeah but now the misfortune of colonialism and neocolonialism is that after colonization colonialism is we have to deal with white colonialism and black neoc colonialism and black neocolonialism is the one that is now enforced actually they are extending the lease of colonialism our African Elite by making sure that they don't change anything in the University yes Malaysia develop a language Bahasa mhm the language they develop also 1965 they get their independence 1970 they're beginning to introduce this Bahasa language at the University level 1983 it is a language that is used for everything medium of instruction and everything you see you see the short period of time U some can say well most of these countries are monolingual but okay why stop L to doing it because it's monolingual Why Stop s doing it's monol yes why is stopping bana to do it is almost monolingual Mo I think they bilingual actually but they can't still do it they can still do it what stop these African countries to do it when they only speaking one language to turn sitana into the official language ofana the medium of instruction the language of innovation the language of science and technology is because we are always looking outward we educating our people to go and serve the outside world correct we are educating ourself to solve European problems not to solve African problems and that is why we are good at that at solving European problems not African problems so therefore we find that we are educating you to be able to be good for the job market anywhere else Europe America so it's modern day slavery actually you think about it you know now you think you have the actual you you you you actually think you have the free will to do so by you know uh choosing to go and work and study in in in Canada and not work back home in Ghana yes exactly so that is why most they talk about the brain drain of the continent it's one of the problem tab's government was contending a lot with that and I've had several African head of state addressing this issue of the brain drain we're educating our human resource and then our human resource go out there to serve the others and it has just become it is just it is just cutting across all level of our social existence soccer yet Europe does not hire African coaches when it comes to soccer no they don't no no they don't you understand they don't hire African coaches they use you African players at one time in the World Cup France almost the whole team was Africans but they are playing for France it goes to our human resources our mineral resources our intellectual resources France is one of the biggest vampire one of the blood sucker one of the power yes he's got a very predatory relationship with Africa in terms of exploiting its resources in holistically so but it is because our Elite what they did during independence and why they continue post Independence is using the language of our for EST colonizers as a medium of instruction as a language of state to run state affairs as a language I mean look at our passport why is it necessary to have a passport with a English and a French name our passport is got English and French name the the French yeah oh yes a and nobody speak actually you see what and it doesn't have why doesn't he have what's French what's the French language doing on our you see so again we do not place value in our languages and we're always defining ourself and our languages in the most disparaging and negative ways we either start to say when I I speak my indigenous language you say I'm being tribal tribalistic ethnic ethnicity M uh but when we speak English which is a tribal language of one of the tribes of Europe you know we don't see anything wrong with it being tribal and tribalistic when we speak French we don't see that because those who colonizers they colonized not only the space the land the rivers and the S theye our mind the mind the ideas the principles and the concepts that come out of our mind they colonize them in totality hence we speak we double speaking and we are suffering from double Consciousness and and all of these type of thing so colonization begins with the language because the language is a carrier of the people's Concepts ideas and principle the language is an index to culture the language is a door to culture so as long as we we don't deal with the issue of the Lang and effectively to the spirit yes to the spirit of course because in most when it comes to African spirituality how many people do you know who PA like English except the African amans and and the African diaspora and most of them I must say they they put on African they try to move to African ways they they want to popularize the a as the same word that we use in limo is you understand they popularize understand but how many of indigenous Africans you find polar in in English or in Africans none because it is not the language of our spirit no it's not it is not a language of spirit it's not a language of African spirituality now when you tell me there's no such thing as African spirituality when I can't express African spirituality in English I have to come down yes and call now even if you suspect that among your ancestors one of them was educated but the line going back there majority of your ancestors did not speak English we know it in instinctively we know it innately nobody even teach anyone about that however educated however any educated African language of the spirit the language of the spirit [Music] this is the language of the spirit like GFI said that Arabic is a language of God this one one of his famous statement G used to say Arabic is the language of God and then again the language of the spirit let's touch that part again the language of the spirit is telling us when we expans shate further that religion is culture deified that is why all Muslims behave like Arabs they they have Arab name they read Arabic book they worship Arabian God they eat Arabic food when we say Arabic we mean to say everything that is in Islam was in Arabia before the Arabs convert to Islam or before the Arab invented Islam that's right that's right everything the names the language the practices they just took them there and there but these things were in there English all Christians behave like Europeans Christianity is more amable to Western culture yes than African culture and therefore that is why one of the primary objective of our colonizers was to change our indigenous religion or our indigenous spiritual culture or our African spirituality and our culture our cultural practices because religion is culture deified when you take the culture of another people and make it holy is a religion that is why all the Jews ah yes religion is culture dayi that is why if I ask you is the word m a cultural name or a religious name of batana it's a cultural name of cultural B don't have religion is the word a cultural name or a religious name of the cla a cultural name of the CLA because don't have a religion because Africans we don't have a religion we had a spiritual cultures our cultures Are Spiritual we have developed a cosmology that is why we say we cosmial we mean to say that we have develop a world view and a life view that takes everything into consideration correct that you can't separate mimu or or our relationship with of with mimu from other aspect of our life that is why we do not have a special day for dealing with mud Sabbath or Sunday any day any day anyway yeah because M was an integral and is an integral part of our culture when we say R we talking about an integral part of our culture is a product of our culture is a result of our cultural intellectualism MH now to say we can't intellectualize our languages is a lie our languages they they were intellectual mhm now when we talk about intellectualizing the African languages today we're talking about them bringing them into the global standard because before we came uh across we came in in contact with the colonizers or with the West the conceptual West and and the Arabs we had developed we have about 10 African script you know the V script the Bandu script the um the akan script all type of script written CBD all those written scripts we had and we used the script the language as a language of innovation innovating what was part of our civilization right integral part of our civilization it did not require us to Outsource a language in order to develop and to progress and and to invent so we we invented everything we invented pre colonialism pre slavery using our indigenous languages so our civilization were African and Indigenous indigenous I mean think if you think about it the the civilization of M yes the civilization of M that's predat colonialism it predates colonialism and in their in their science in their anthropology reports they acknowledge that these things were there yes long long before long before Invasion exactly look at the the gold we saw the and the beats and the fact that they were actually trading with the East yes they were they were having trade but they were having also things that they were making themselves as a product of their own industry yes indigenous industry so to say we can't bring these languages we need to standardize our languages we need to stop with this um tokenism applied on our languages and say they part of the 11 official languages but how many government spaces you enter you fill up forms in your African languages never never it's either Africans or English M yet we have 11 official languages and none of nine of them are African mhm yeah you understand but these nine African languages that form part of the 11 official languages are not the language of applications uh are not the language of invention Innovation production labor you know not at all I understand even the language of decolonization as we are busy now it's foreign yes it is Eng it yes you see so now we need to understand that one it is possible to invent a language or to agree on a particular language say for instance look at how transval or maybe let me say primarily it is originally area yes indigenously dominate but look how the Zulu of guazu moved from kadan from guazu to and haveu become the most dominant language in we come from Li speaking when I ask Direction in Zulu you even when you get into shop you're buying Zulu all of that and not even by force Zulus did not go there and impose their language but you see this cultural cross breeding that takes place among ourself it's one of the perfect examples that we should learn from that if you can move swiftly like that was not even by force do not by Conquest do not by anything voluntarily voluntarily we voluntarily speak although in some legal cases there and there you those are minor cases that you can say yeah and bit a bit of for yeah there's a little bit of work there that needs to be done but we can't not do the work we can not do the work on the basis that people like that exist yeah no and we can use that to to to to blame it on how Zulu became dominant is because of this Zulu man imposed is Zulu no the language moed you go to so to you get a whole lot of people of different ethnicity and so I mean they placed in those ethnicities and you know if if you go but if you listen to the type of zulu that they speak the dialect that they they speak it's only spoken in so yes you know they they managed amongst the El to come up with a the kind of zoo that everybody is able to understand and communicate and communicate which makes everyone from every language group to be able to speak that language you understand but it's aul that is modernized um easier for everybody to use practically we have two SLS in South Africa and one of them is dominated by zul we is dominated by zul and then dominated by Africans Africans yes again another typical example of language creation how did we create how did we come up with how did you come up withal in the minds yeah understand yeah that they veloped this language that they communicate with pretty much how swah was developed just came up as a linga Fran the language of trade between the Arabs and the Banu people and then in the process come up this language now to say with universities Malaysia again the example of Malaysia Malaysia got its independent 65 70 it developed the language then it even form established a new University for that particular purpose the national university of Malaysia just to develop this Bahasa language that they having now as their national language now we have universities and we have universities that not just University Malaysia develop one University had one University and then they developed a new University whose medium of instruction was this language now we had universities that his hisorical the buas again that's how they managed to standardize their language to intellectualization of it is that they had specific Africans universities um stellin Bosch vet was also very much Africans yeah Africans and the Jews English and all of that but por porch universities right they were specifically even turis yes they were specifically designed and that is why you find that University of Petoria is complicit was a main institution of a even the covering up ofor even if we go around the stories of you're going to find that the University of p is implicated because it was a an institution of Higher Learning actively involved in the African culture development sustainance and maintenance protection and promotion it it was involved now we had traditionally about six seven African universities University of Venda University of Lio University of Northwest maatu University for university university of guazu UK zulul land I understand so we have more than five African or traditionally or originally established universities as African universities they only started post 1994 to introduce a subject called indigenous knowledge system which is not doing much in standardizing and in intellectualizing our language is not doing much actually some of the things someone was talking about how the University of limo conduct ik you know they call Trad put on CA and all of that now you thinking you are looking so ik is reduced to that yeah it's reduced to that people who are you see the The Dilemma of ik in South Africa number one the last time I checked the head of ik national in this country you can't even speak one indigenous Lang of this country what is what is he presiding over they just eating money it's ridiculous yes so the problem we're having here is products like that disciplines like that like ik are run by people who are not even ik practitioners yes they just read a couple of books um Interfaith spaces they run by people who are not Interfaith they're interdenominational yes they more entrenching different denomination of one particular Faith so this is the greatest disservice that is been done to us you understand the head of IKS in South Africa does not speak any of the indigenous languages of South Africa number one number two H IKS is not conducted in indigenous language none of those subject is few contributors to ik like we have developed theas Bas mathematics and all of that but it's like a voice in the wilderness it's like a drop in Ocean so you see now the language again even when we talk about indigenization it is not the indigenous language that has been used you know what just came to my mind that everything that you know none of the universities can claim that you learned it from them yep partly that is the reason why I don't want to go to university partly that is the reason I also feel like actually no no you don't you know there is a process that you can actually get your PhD of course okay I know through there we are declaring this now any University that dares to want to be the first to own the knowledge that s har manua knows or holds please step forward we will dedicate ourselves we will write you that thesis we will get that PhD through your University you will be the first custodian of the knowledge that is been shared byi ta Hara from the B Society this is your opportunity actually yeah actually what um what you are saying that is um historical beging to e one Vice Chancellor of one University of the University of limbo be very specific yeah um they have a program every year every September called Spring lectures yeah where it's a week of indigenous knowledge of ik that was actually in the early stages of pioneering and pting ik 2008 there I used to attend those spring lectures and participate in the uh the first time I participated there I participated the whole week I wasn't a guest I was called by my friend who's a lecturer who's now a doctor and a director of I in another University then he was a lecturer and I was traveling with him and then we went there we spent the whole week attending the spring lectures and every paper that was presented I was engaging it rigorously practically every discipline that was presented so then the spring lectures finished and then there was a gadina and then the vice Chancellor was thanking everybody and then he said finally ta Hara he was not a a guest speaker he was not one of the presenters but he presented his paper effectively from the ground from the floor MH to the point that I've been battling with myself to to see to see if through the program of RPL recognition of prayer learning if we are to place him we can place him where you know obviously not degree Masters honors PhD but definitely PhD because he do so well than most of the professors and lecturers we having here that was the first time someone from Academia make that OBS acknowledge and make that observation and then over the years it happened I got at one time um offered a lecture job at Uganda in Uganda after attending some conference hosted by CS you know actually that was earlier period um I attended when they were transforming the O into the African Union was a big event at p i so Professor Dan of Uganda offered me a job I went to lecture for two weeks at his Institute Nels Mandela Institute in mbali in Uganda and then fast forward last year there was an indigenous astronomy conference in the University of Northwest mahen Campus mhm um again I was presenting a paper researching the researchers the antithesis of thesis that is where I basically started to unveil the researching the researchers yeah because I look at all of these people I say I'm think this researchers need to be researched yes you know where did they get all of of this you know because some of this contradict our knowledge of our indigenous knowledge yes knowledge so after that the dean of the faculty of human Sciences of the humanities M uh also made that observation and said H you need to get your PhD you need to get accredited so what you are saying it is true yeah I've not been aggressively pursuing it because one part of me say I have singlehandedly self taught myself what I know and going to some University and then they give me a gold skin and then claim everything that I know that it comes from them because they credited me but then I got some compromises I had a conversation uh with someone and then I had a conversation with you and then we did some observation and thinking that most of what we we present on an institutional B of Band Society will be given more ear if there is a PhD attached to because people like that one who were setting the record straight up spiritual someone just come and comment and say what is your credentials correct you know what makes you a guru yes his experience is 33 years going to 34 years of being involved in this field yeah spending out 18 African countries traveling learning teaching and and lecturing and and learning spending a period of sitting in the feet of the Masters yes the likes of Koto I visited his home 2010 set ask questions you know so it is a mixture of so many things that when people ask me which book do you read do you read to recommend for me I'm thinking I've seen those comments I'm thinking it's difficult to point to a book Because as much as it's difficult to point to a particular University so I end up saying I'm a professor of the University of the street I lecture in the University of the street so but I agree with your proposition and the proposition of others and I'm strongly considering that for the sake of giving structure MH H Integrity Western Integrity um to this knowledge that I've have accumulated I've decided that I need to pursue a PhD um for to give that structure but one of my own oldest passion was also to be a professor and lecture in the university to lecture to the tertiary students about African spirituality African cosmology African ontology African epistemology African philosophy African uh culture African calendar systems you know know because I've made some serious observation also yes that that needs to be you meet the University students you engage them after they have been through the institutions and they realized by their own admissions I've observed it too by their own admission that there not even half of what they learned in the just the short 10 minutes or 15 minutes of been around you could they have ever learned um in in in University yeah yeah so yeah so I'm thinking maybe that is a a national service hence uh the Bandu Soul society as an institution with his nine modules that uh since I can lecture in the University then we will do it here we will do it here there's nothing that stop us having institution basically the first man who builded University never went to University himself yeah the first person who gave another person a degree did not have a degree himself so so I don't need that you understand I just need to have knowledge structured organized and be able to be applied applied sciences correct and and and that has been the journey it's been about theory and practice theory and practice and so the knowledge is there and band Soul society as an institution it exist mhm and we are open for business online classes One onone MH lecture H classes we're ready to provide our nine modules and take our people from Christianity to Africa africanity and we are saying as Africa is my witness this will happen and this is happening mhm and if you should uh wish to be on this side of the phone with the sanusi H do book a one-on-one session uh at least a good 20 minutes to to 40 minutes depending on your package um it will be the most rewarding experience you will ever have yes they must just visit our website yes www society.org also Al drop us an email at info@ bantus society.org Za or banuso society atgmailcom and we also provide H studies for long distance correspondents our brothers and sisters in the African dasp in in all its configuration the six region the Caribbean North America South America Europe we are open for engagement [Music] yes

Channel: Bantu Soul Society

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Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 14 2023