MASILO LEPURU
“What became of the Black People of Sumer? They lost their history, so they died” (Chancellor Williams in “The Destruction of Black Civilization”).
The month of February is celebrated as a Black History Month. Of course, this is mainly within the racist American context in which the historical condition of people of African descent reduced to the enslaved sought meaning in a white settler colony, called the United States of America.
White supremacy which fundamentally attacks the being and culture of people of African descent in white America is the condition of possibility for the call for a Black History Month. This is in recognition of the fact that in a white settler world like white America, eurocentric history always permeates the existence and relations of people.
This epistemic domination is inevitably accompanied by the “silencing of history” of the cultural other; in this case people of African descent in “conqueror America”. The celebration of Black History Month, as limited and problematic as it is, is a manifestation on the part of people of African descent of their resistance agency at the level of knowledge production and politics.
Their history of enslavement and demographic minority position to a certain extent influence the nature of their Struggle against white supremacy and their knowledge production. White South Africa just like white America is a racist white settler colony premised on white supremacy. The condition of Africans in these white settler colonies is one of being racially dominated by European masters and conquerors.
It is in this sense that Africans in white South Africa can pose the question, what is the meaning of Black History Month? Or rather what is the significance of history? Our main point of departure is that history is the continuation of war by other means. To adequately answer this question, which entails life and death, two questions posed by Bernard Magubane who was unfortunately committed to the ANC’s congress tradition should be considered.
These questions are whose history? Whose memory? The nature of history and memory are determined by the political relation of the people who create them. In “conqueror South Africa” the fundamental relation is one of the irreconcilable antagonism between the natives and white settlers.
The white-supremacist relation between the indigenous people as natives and white settlers as descendants of European conquerors is not one of a mere conflict. While conflict suggests a misunderstanding and is resolvable through a peaceful dialogue, the historical relation between the indigenous people and white settlers is one of an irreconcilable confrontation in spite of the farcical TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission).
The TRC with its biblical delusions under Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Madiba Magic unsuccessfully attempted to reduce this irreconcilable antagonism to a mere conflict which can be resolved through a revelation of the “truth”. Due to this antagonistic relation between the indigenous people and white settlers which will eventually result in the end of white South Africa and the restoration of a New Africa/Azania, we deduce two irreconcilable roles in this inevitable racial confrontation.
The role of the indigenous is a revolutionary one, while that of white settlers is a conservative one. The indigenous people who were conquered in race wars of colonisation from 1652 have the historical role of destroying white supremacy, which is founded on land dispossession and “intellectual warfare”/epistemicide.
White settlers on the other hand have a role of conserving white supremacy founded by European conquerors as their racist ancestors. Their predictable refusal to return the land and the distortion and destruction of the knowledge of the indigenous people is a manifestation of this racist conservative role of white settlers to this day in the so-called post-apartheid South Africa. It is in this sense that white South Africa is nothing but a relation of a race war between the indigenous people and white settlers.
This race war relation manifests itself in recurring racial battles (racist incidents). It is not true to argue that a civil war was avoided during the so-called transitional period. Conquest which took place since 1652 resulted in the structure of a race war as a political relation between the conquered indigenous people and the conquering white settlers.
The liberal conceptualisation of white South Africa as a civil society comprising citizens with equal rights in terms of the final constitution is a façade to hide this relation of a race war between the indigenous people and white settlers. This is not surprising since racism as the core of wars of conquest since 1652 is a declaration of a race war by reducing the indigenous people to animals available for enslavement and genocide. The white settler construction of the indigenous people as animals and barbarians was a way of justifying the violence which was inflicted by European conquerors on them who then justifiably waged wars of collective self-defence.
This race war waged by European conquerors is couched in euphemistic terms such as “the civilising mission” or “the bringing of light to a dark continent”. These are the history and memory of white settlers for the indigenous people. The South African his-tory written by the likes of Theal, Thompson and Walker is a white settler intellectual warfare which justifies the physical conquest of the indigenous people in a series of race wars since 1652.
It does not matter whether it is the imperial, liberal, “Afrikaner” and neo-Marxist school. They all take for granted the presence of white settlers thus accept white supremacy.
This is because whites are only willing to accept a reality in which they are in power and supreme. This is how South African his-tory is an extension of the race war in the form of intellectual ideas.
South African his-tory as a form of intellectual warfare seeks fundamentally to conserve whites and white supremacy in “conqueror South Africa”. Our-story of the indigenous people which is premised on their revolutionary role in the race war antagonism since 1652 comprises the Azanian and Africanist schools. Both fundamentally seek to end white supremacy and white South Africa.
They are based on the memory and our-story of the ancestors of the Indigenous people who fought against a series of race wars waged by white settlers. They only differ in terms of their political visions. In other words, what do we do with whites after the destruction of white supremacy? White South Africa is the main point of disagreement. The Azanian school is naively willing to accept whites on the terms of the African majority.
Our Africanist school based on the Garveyite battle-cry of Africa for the Africans those at home and abroad, rejects whites as implacable and everlasting enemies of the African race.
Masilo Lepuru is a junior researcher at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation.
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