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African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7 Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
IN CELEBRATION OF MARCUS GARVEY’S 125 TH BIRTHDAY
Marcus Garvey: Black
Champion of Vision and
Destiny
August 3, 2012
The Gleaner
I NSIDE T HIS I SSUE
By Kevin O'Brien Chang
Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Continued on page 2
3 Afrikan Spirituality – Ubuntu Philosophy for Peace
4 Feature – Marcus Garvey
5 Impact of Marcus Garvey
6 Feature- Marcus Garvey/United Negro Improvement Assn
8 Feature – Marcus Garvey and the Black Star Line
14 Caribbean Groups want Obama to Pardon Marcus Garvey
16 “If You Believe the Negro has a Soul” – Back to Africa
17 Feature – Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey
27 Marcus Garvey Statement called “Rastafari Prophecy”
28 Feature – The Economics of Marcus Garvey
32 Roots of the Rastarfari Movement
34 Featured – Marcus Garvey’s Liberian Dream Deferred
39 Feature – The Global Capitalist Crisis and Africa’s Future
49 Intellectuals and Just Causes
54 Marcus Garvey Owe Large Debt to Caribbean Expats
59 Feature: Garveyism is what Black Africa Needs
64 Feature –Marcus Garvey Pan African Institute/University
69 Feature – Ulogy for Marcus Garvey
72 RIP: Celebrating the History, Legacy and Future Work
73 Collectivism not Colonialism
74 Happy Birthday Uganda, Jamaica and Marcus Garvey
-1- Traditional African Clinic – August 2012
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Cont’d from page 1 – Marcus Garvey: Black Champion of
Vision and Destiny
No other Jamaican has had such a profound international
impact as Marcus Garvey has. In an era that
treated the idea of black inferiority almost as a given
fact, Garvey shouted "No!" in a voice heard across the
planet. In Martin Luther King Jr's words, Garvey was
"the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of
Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny ....He gave us a
sense of personhood, a sense of manhood, a sense of
somebodiness."
Garvey was a foreman at Kingston's largest printery when
the 1907 earthquake devastated the city. Resulting
financial hardships prompted the printers' union -
Jamaica's first - to ask for better wages and working
conditions. When turned down, they went on strike.
Hoping he would keep the plant operating, the owners
offered Garvey a pay increase. He refused and walked out
with his men, who chose him to organise the strike. The
strike was eventually broken and, blacklisted by private
printers, Garvey took a government job.
In 1910, he began travelling across the Americas and
Europe. Though he did not visit Africa, he kept abreast of
African affairs, and made contact with influential
Africans. He conceived the idea of one great international
organisation of proud, educated and financially
independent black people who would take their place as
equals on the world stage.
He returned to Jamaica in 1914, and, on Emancipation
Day, August 1, launched the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA was
dedicated to improving the conditions of black people the
world over. Its famous motto was 'One God! One Aim!
One Destiny!' Seeing a larger stage in the United States,
he moved there in 1916.
At its height, the UNIA had an estimated four million
members with more than 1,000 branches in more than 20
countries, and is generally considered the largest mass
movement in Afro-American history. Many major
African political figures would recall being influenced by
Garvey, including Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, Kenya's
Jomo Kenyatta, and Nigeria's Nnamdi Azikiwe. Much of
the African National Congress leadership in 1920s South
Africa belonged to the UNIA. So did Elijah Muhammad,
who, to a large extent, patterned his Nation of Islam
movement on the UNIA. Malcom X's father was a UNIA
organiser, and Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Min attended
UNIA meetings.
Like many visionaries, Garvey was not the most practical
of businessmen. His Black Star Line Steamship
Corporation, conceptualised to transport blacks back to
Africa, proved a financial disaster. It also gave American
authorities, who saw Garvey as a threat to the Jim Crow
status quo, the opportunity to neutralise him. He was
charged for fraud, given a five-year sentence, and deported
back to Jamaica in 1927.
Thousands hailed Garvey's return. The Daily Gleaner
reported that "no denser crowd has ever been witnessed in
Kingston .... Deafening cheers were raised." In 1929,
Garvey formed the People's Political Party (PPP) and put
forward Jamaica's first practical manifesto. It called for
Jamaican representation in the British Parliament, a
Jamaican university, a free government high school and
public library in each parish capital, promotion of native
industries, public housing, land reform, and minimum wage
and eight-hour day legislation.
Garvey also hosted lectures, debates, training courses and
cultural programmes at Liberty Hall, the first meeting hall
in Jamaica owned and operated by blacks. Among those
who benefited from these educational offerings were Sir
Phillip Sherlock, Wesley Powell, Dalton James, Amy
Bailey, and Father Gladstone Wilson.
The planter and merchant elite saw Garvey as a threat to
their privileged way of life, and hounded him mercilessly.
Gleaner editor H.G. Delisser led the vilification campaign,
which was sadly so successful that many still believe
Garvey never had a large following in his native land.
The PPP manifesto also proposed the impeachment of
corrupt judges. This led to a contempt-of-court charge, and
Garvey was jailed for three months, being released only a
month before the national election.
Despite massive crowds, no PPP candidate was successful.
Few Garvey supporters met the stringent property
requirements that restricted the electoral list to less than
eight per cent of the populace. The majority of these voters
were black, but Garvey was not popular with the civil
servants and small proprietors who dominated the voting
list. He was also attacked by conservative black clergymen
and teachers. The PPP defeat was perhaps more about class
than colour.
As Garvey said afterwards, "The thousands who attended
and cheered at the party's meetings indicate that if you, the
poor people, had a vote, our party would have been sent to
the Legislature." He called for full adult suffrage, but never
lived to see it. Harried by the colonial administration, he
emigrated to England in 1935, and died there five years
later.
In 1964, his body was repatriated, and Marcus Garvey was
declared Jamaica's first National Hero.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120803/news/news4.html
☻☻☻☻☻☻
-2- Traditional African Clinic – August 2012

AFRIKAN SPIRITUALITY
Ubuntu Philosophy as an
African Philosophy for Peace
By David Suze Manda
14 March 2009
INTRODUCTION
The idea of understanding the image of Africa and the
relevance of peace and development approaches brought
in my mind the importance to look at the Ubuntu as one
of African approaches of understanding the humanity as a
process of building cohesion and humanness when it
comes to building peace in our daily life. I shall look at
the meaning of Ubuntu, its religious, political and
philosophical dimensions which will allow grasping its
foundation being based on the emphasis of promotion of
ethics for the humankind. The last point will be to find
some criticism especially some of dangers of Ubuntu, if
one takes this notion for granted.
When we talk about philosophy, we tend to emphasize on
the critical thinking that pushes reason to several
questions about different realities of the life though
sometimes it does not necessary give an answer to all.
Etymologically, philosophy basically means the search,
the love, the passion for wisdom. In ancient Greek, philo
meant friend and sophia, wisdom. In other words, it is the
longing and thirst to become wise when dealing with
different situations, realities, whether being connected to
human beings or to the rest of the cosmos, universe.
In this way, Ubuntu reveals its participation in the
promotion of wisdom not only for human beings but also
for the whole creation. Having this idea in mind, it is
relevant to look first at the meaning of Ubuntu.
1. WHAT IS UBUNTU?
The word 'Ubuntu' comes from one of the Bantu dialects
of Africa. It is a traditional African philosophy that gives
an understanding of us as human beings in relation with
the rest of the world. According to Ubuntu, there exists a
common link between us all and it is through this tie,
through our interaction with our fellow human beings,
that we discover our own human qualities. The Zulus
would say, "Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu", which means
that a person is a person through other persons. We
affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of
others.
--------------------------
Managing Editor: Nakato Lewis
Publisher: Kiwanuka R.G. Lewis
Published monthly and freely by BHSN–Back Issues:
http://www.blackherbals.com/athrc_newsletters.htm
The traditional shrine as a symbol of our cultural history
Barbara argues that:
Ubuntu is the capacity in African culture to express
compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony, and
humanity in the interests of building and
maintaining community. Ubuntu calls on us to
believe and feel that: Your pain is my pain, my
wealth is your wealth, and your salvation is my
salvation. In essence, Ubuntu, an Nguni word from
South Africa, addresses our interconnectedness, our
common humanity, and the responsibility to each
other that flows from our connection. The eclipse of
Ubuntu has darkened the spirit of modern-day
African political systems. However, imagine the
potential of ubuntu’s sunlight, were it to be
embraced as a vital part of the African renaissance
or even as Africa’s contribution to help a divided,
fragmented world (Nussbaum, 2003: 21).
The eclipse of Ubuntu has been manifested in most
of the leaders after independences whereby the
leader was the center of everything being
considered as the main reference, losing thereby the
essence of Ubuntu that focuses of the community
up-building. But in spite of some ruthless leaders,
the essence of Ubuntu remains in the common
people as Broodryk describes:
The African people have a more informal and
relaxed way of living and speaking which manifest
in singing, dancing, laughing, painting, and
sculpturing. Many Africans regard this happier style
of living as unique and peculiar to Africa. It is this
reference to a certain way of living that makes
Ubuntu life so different from life in other cultures.
Africans are generally hesitant to endeavor giving a
clear-cut definition of this unique type of partly, or
at occasions totally, uninhibited expression of
appreciation with life, even in times of temporary
misery (Broodryk, 2006: 4).
This way of life may also be witnessed in different
cultures of the world such in Asia. Stereotyping
Continued on page 33
-3- Traditional African Clinic – August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Marcus Garvey
By RaceandHistory.com
Marcus Garvey
"I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite
object of helping the people, especially those of my race,
to know, to understand, and to realize themselves." --
Marcus Garvey, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1937
In several ways, and certainly from political and cultural
standpoints, we are still weighing the monumental impact
of Marcus Garvey around the world. His clarion call of
"One Aim, One God, One Destiny," and "Africans for
Africans at home and abroad," still resonate, having an
especially significant value in the spiritual and
psychological outlook of Black people wherever they
reside.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in St. Ann, Jamaica, in
1887, descended from the fiercely proud Maroons. He
founded the newspaper The Negro World, which took as
its motto his nationalist cry, "One God, One Aim, One
Destiny."
Garvey was virtually self-taught, reading voraciously
from his father's extensive library. By 1910, and then
residing in Kingston, he quickly established himself as a
orator, a skill that was the hallmark of his illustrious
political career.
For the next four years or so Garvey traveled throughout
the West Indies, Central America and Europe, primarily
working as a printer and an editor. In England he worked
briefly at the prestigious Africa Times and Orient
-4- Traditional African Clinic – August 2012
Review, where he came under the estimable influence
of Duse Muhammad. Upon his return to Jamaica, he
was convinced of a need for an organization to uplift
the downtrodden people of his island. Thus was born
the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
In 1917, he founded UNIA (Universal Negro
Improvement Association) in Harlem. Its aims were
described in a speech delivered by Garvey in 1924 at
Madison Square Garden, New York: The Universal
Improvement Association represents the hopes and
aspirations of the awakened Negro. Our desire is for a
place in the world, not to disturb the tranquility of other
men, but to lay down our burden and rest our weary
backs and feet by the banks of the Niger and sing our
songs and chant our hymns to the God of Ethiopia.
Two years later, after being completely captivated by
Booker T. Washington's autobiography "Up From
Slavery," Garvey wrote to the great man and was soon
thinking of building his own institution modeled after
Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Through the
correspondence with Washington, Garvey made plans
to visit the United States. Unfortunately, when he
finally arrived in America, Washington had died the
previous year in 1915, but a visionary like Garvey was
not deterred by this setback. As part of his introduction
to the states, Garvey toured the country, lecturing and
establishing contacts. It took the energetic Garvey only
a couple of years to place the UNIA on the political
map, and this notoriety was ushered along by his
extremely potent weekly the Negro World.
At its peak, some historians have written, the UNIA
boasted a membership of more than four million, with
almost as many sympathizers. How it rose to this
prominence and its ultimate eclipse which has been
insightfully discussed in the works of Robert Hill and
Tony Martin. What is apparent in their exhaustive
studies is the powerful impression Garvey left on our
spiritual and mental health. His fervent nationalism, his
belief in self-reliance is an indelible stamp that marks
our progress as a people. We salute the magnificent
Continued on page 5

Continued from page 4 – Marcus Garvey
Garvey on his birthday, knowing that his prodigious
soul-force will carry us through the 21st century and
beyond.
Ethiopianism includes the appreciation of Ethiopia's
ancient civilization as well as its role in the Bible. To
blacks, Africa (interchangeable with Ethiopia) became a
glorious, Biblical homeland equated with Zion. The
recognition of African roots and the desire for
repatriation has been a central theme in New World
black religion before and since emancipation.
Ethiopianism became a "black religious reaction to proslavery
propaganda."
Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement developed
the spirit of Ethiopianism to its fullest extent.
...since white people have seen their God through white
spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it
be) to see our God through our own spectacles. The God
of Isaac and the God of Jacob let him exist for the race
that believe in the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the
everlasting God -- God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the
one God of all ages. That is the God in whom we
believe, but we shall worship him through the spectacles
of Ethiopia.
Garvey's words planted the seeds for most "Black God"
movements in the US and Caribbean. Stressing the
superiority of the ancient Africans and the dignity of the
black race, he inspired many successful nationalist
movements and numerous African leaders from Kenyatta
to Nyerere.
Garvey's goal of repatriation was expressed in his
famous slogan "Africa for the Africans." His well-known
Black Star Line steamship company was established to
trade and eventually carry New World blacks to Africa.
This prophet of African redemption was not always
successful in his countless business ventures, but by the
1920s Garvey was the most powerful leader among the
black masses in the United States.
In 1916, before he left for his US campaign, Garvey's
farewell address to Jamaicans included the words "Look
to Africa for the crowning of a Black king; he shall be
the Redeemer."
http://www.raceandhistory.com/Historians/marcus_garvey.htm
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Until lions tell their tale, the story of the hunt will
always glorify the hunter
– African Proverb
The Impact of Marcus Garvey
By John Henrik Clarke
When Marcus Garvey died in 1940 the role of the British
Empire was already being challenged by India and the
rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus
Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the
restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity
in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941,
the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had
been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus
Garvey's prophesy about the European scramble to
maintain dominance over the whole world was now a
reality. The people of Africa and Asia had joined in this
conflict but with different hopes, different dreams and
many misgivings. Africans throughout the colonial world
were mounting campaigns against this system which had
robbed them of their nation-ness and their basic humanness.
The discovery and the reconsideration of the
teachings of the honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey were
being rediscovered and reconsidered by a large number of
African people as this world conflict deepened.
In 1945, when World War II was drawing to a close the
5th Pan-African Congress was called in Manchester,
England. Some of the conventioneers were: George
Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Dubois, Nnamdi
Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. Up to
this time the previous Pan-African Congresses had
mainly called for improvements in the educational status
of the Africans in the colonies so that they would be
prepared for self-rule when independence eventually
came.
The Pan-African Congress in Manchester was radically
different from all of the other congresses. For the first
time Africans from Africa, Africans from the Caribbean
and Africans from the United States had come together
and designed a program for the future independence of
Africa. Those who attended the conference were of many
political persuasions and different ideologies, yet the
teachings of Marcus Garvey were the main ideological
basis for the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester,
England in 1945.
Some of the conveners of this congress would return to
Africa in the ensuing years to eventually lead their
respective nations toward independence and beyond. In
1947, a Ghanaian student who had studied ten years in
the United States, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah returned to
Ghana on the invitation of Joseph B. Danquah, his former
schoolmaster. Nkrumah would later become Prime
Minister. In his fight for the complete independence for
Continued on page 12
-5- Traditional African Clinic – August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro
Improvement Association
By David Van Leeuwen
© National Humanities Center
Marcus Garvey and his organization, the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA), represent the largest
mass movement in African-American history.
Proclaiming a black nationalist "Back to Africa"
message, Garvey and the UNIA established 700
branches in thirty-eight states by the early 1920s. While
chapters existed in the larger urban areas such as New
York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Garvey's message
reached into small towns across the country as well.
Later groups such as Father Divine's Universal Peace
Mission Movement and the Nation of Islam drew
members and philosophy from Garvey's organization,
and the UNIA's appeal and influence were felt not only
in America but in Canada, the Caribbean, and
throughout Africa.
Considering the strong political and economic black
nationalism of Garvey's movement, it may seem odd to
include an essay on him in a Web site on religion in
America. However, his philosophy and organization
had a rich religious component that he blended with the
political and economic aspects. Garvey himself claimed
that his "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of
the World," along with the Bible, served as "the Holy
Writ for our Negro Race." He stated very clearly that "as
we pray to Almighty God to save us through his Holy
Words so shall we with confidence in ourselves follow
the sentiment of the Declaration of Rights and carve our
way to liberty." For Garvey, it was no less than the will
of God for black people to be free to determine their
own destiny. His organization took as its motto "One
God! One Aim! One Destiny!" and looked to the literal
fulfillment of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out of
Egypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto
God."
Garvey was born in 1887 in St. Anne's Bay, Jamaica.
Due to the economic hardship of his family, he left
school at age fourteen and learned the printing and
newspaper business. He became interested in politics
and soon got involved in projects aimed at helping those
on the bottom of society. Unsatisfied with his work, he
travelled to London in 1912 and stayed in England for
two years. During this time he paid close attention to the
controversy between Ireland and England concerning
Ireland's independence. He was also exposed to the
ideas and writings of a group of black colonial writers
that came together in London around the African Times
and Orient Review. Nationalism in both Ireland and
Africa along with ideas such as race conservation
undoubtedly had an impact on Garvey.
However, he later remembered that the most influential
experience of his stay in London was reading Booker T.
Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery.
Washington believed African Americans needed to
improve themselves first, showing whites in America
that they deserved equal rights. Although politically
involved behind the scenes, Washington repeatedly
claimed that African Americans would not benefit from
Continued on page 7
-6- Traditional African Clinic – August 2012

Continued from page 6 – Marcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association
political activism and started an industrial training
school in Alabama that embodied his own philosophy of
self-help. Garvey embraced Washington's ideas and
returned to Jamaica in 1914 to found the UNIA with the
motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"
Initially he kept very much in line with Washington by
encouraging his fellow Jamaicans of African descent to
work hard, demonstrate good morals and a strong
character, and not worry about politics as a tool to
advance their cause. Garvey did not make much
headway in Jamaica and decided to visit America in
order to meet Booker T. Washington and learn more
about the situation of African Americans. By the time
Garvey arrived in America in 1916, Washington had
died, but Garvey decided to travel around the country
and observe African Americans and their struggle for
equal rights.
What Garvey saw was a shifting population and a
diminishing hope in Jim Crow's demise. African
Americans were moving in large numbers out of the
rural South and into the urban areas of both North and
South. As World War One came to an end,
disillusionment was beginning to take hold. Not only
was the optimism in the continuing improvement of
humanity and society broken apart, but so was any hope
on the part of African Americans that they would gain
the rights enjoyed by every white American citizen.
African Americans had served in large numbers in the
war, and many expected some kind of respect and
acknowledgment that they too were equal citizens.
Indeed, World War One was the perfect opportunity for
African Americans to fulfill Booker T. Washington's
requirement for equality and freedom. Through
dedicated service in the armed forces, they could prove
their worth and show they deserved the same rights as
whites. However, as black soldiers returned from the
war, and more and more African Americans moved into
the urban areas, racial tensions grew. Between 1917 and
1919 race riots erupted in East St. Louis, Chicago,
Tulsa, and other cities, demonstrating that whites did
not intend to treat African Americans any differently
than they had before the war.
After surveying the racial situation in America, Garvey
was convinced that integration would never happen and
that only economic, political, and cultural success on
the part of African Americans would bring about
equality and respect. With this goal he established the
head quarters of the UNIA in New York in 1917 and
began to spread a message of black nationalism and the
eventual return to Africa of all people of African
descent.
-7- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
His brand of black nationalism had three components—
unity, pride in the African cultural heritage, and complete
autonomy. Garvey believed people of African descent
could establish a great independent nation in their ancient
homeland of Africa. He took the self-help message of
Washington and adapted it to the situation he saw in
America, taking a somewhat individualistic, integrationist
philosophy and turning it into a more corporate,
politically-minded, nation-building message.
In 1919 Garvey purchased an auditorium in Harlem and
named it Liberty Hall. There he held nightly meetings to
get his message out, sometimes to an audience of six
thousand. In 1918 he began a newspaper, Negro World,
which by 1920 had a circulation somewhere between
50,000 and 200,000. Membership in the UNIA is difficult
to assess. At one point, Garvey claimed to have six
million members. That figure is most likely inflated.
However, it is beyond dispute that millions were involved
and directly affected by Garvey and his message.
To promote unity, Garvey encouraged African Americans
to be concerned with themselves first. He stated after
World War One that "[t]he first dying that is to be done
by the black man in the future will be done to make
himself free. And then when we are finished, if we have
any charity to bestow, we may die for the white man. But
as for me, I think I have stopped dying for him." Black
people had to do the work that success and independence
demanded, and, most important, they had to do that work
for themselves. "If you want liberty," claimed Garvey to a
meeting held in 1921, "you yourselves must strike the
blow. If you must be free, you must become so through
your own effort."
But Garvey knew African Americans would not take
action if they did not change their perceptions of
themselves. He hammered home the idea of racial pride
by celebrating the African past and encouraging African
Americans to be proud of their heritage and proud of the
way they looked. Garvey proclaimed "black is beautiful"
long before it became popular in the 1960s. He wanted
African Americans to see themselves as members of a
mighty race. "We must canonize our own saints, create
our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and
honor black men and women who have made their
distinct contributions to our racial history." He
encouraged parents to give their children "dolls that look
like them to play with and cuddle," and he did not want
black people thinking of themselves in a defeatist way. "I
am the equal of any white man; I want you to feel the
same way."
Garvey organized his group in a way that made those
sentiments visible. He created an African Legion that
dressed in military garb, uniformed marching bands, and
Continued on page 13

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Marcus Garvey and the Black Star Line
By Makafui Apeku
January 29, 2011
WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE BEHIND THE
BLACK STAR LINE?
At the end of this centennial year for Marcus Garvey,
Jamaica would have conceded three important event
that are significant to his cultural legacy for black
majority political and economic power.
The Black Star Line was a shipping company
established by Marcus Garvey, founder of the UNIA
(Universal Negro Improvement Association). The
shipping line was supposed to facilitate the movement
of goods and African Americans throughout the
African global economy. It derived its name from the
White Star Line, a line whose success Garvey felt he
could emanate, which would become a standard of his
Back-to-Africa movement. It was one among many
businesses which the UNIA originated.
The Black Star Line and the Black Cross Navigation
and Trading Company, function between 1919 and
1922. It stands today as a major symbol for Garvey
followers and African Americans in search of a way to
get back to their homeland.
The Black Star Line started in Delaware on June 23,
1919. Having a majority capitalization of $500,000, BSL
stocks were sold at UNIA conventions at five dollars
each. The company's losses were estimated to be between
$630,000 and $1.25 million.
The Black Star Line surprised all its critics and opponent
when, three months after being in operation, the first of
four ships, the SS Yarmouth was bought with the
intention of it being rechristened the Frederick Douglass.
The Yarmouth was a coal ship during the First World
War, and was in bad structure when it was bought by the
Black Star shipping company. Once reconditioned, the
Yarmouth sail for three years between the U.S. and the
West Indies as the first Black Star Line ship with black
crew and a black captain. Later Joshua Cockburn, the
captain was accused of bribery and corruption.
The SS Yarmouth was not the only ship bought in bad
structure and so compleyely expensive. Marcus Garvey
spent extra $200,000 for more ships. The SS Shadyside,
sailed on the Hudson River one summer and sank, the
next fall because of a leak many thought to be sabotage.
Another was a steam yacht once owned by Henry
Huttleston Rogers. Booker T. Washington had been an
honored guest aboard the ship when it was owned by his
friend and confidant, Rogers, and was known as the
Kanawha. However, Rogers had died in 1909, and the
once maintained yacht had also served in the first World
War. Renamed by the Black Star Line the SS Antonio
Maceo, blew up and and killed a man off the Virginia
coast on its first sailing from New York to Cuba, and had
to be towed back to New York.
Besides oversold, poorly conditioned ships, Black Star
Line was beset by corruption of management and
infiltration by agents of J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of
Investigation (the forerunner to the FBI), who –
according to historian Winston James – sabotaged it by
throwing foreign matter into the fuel, damaging the
engines.[1] The first commission for the Yarmouth was
to haul whiskey from the U.S. to Cuba before Prohibition.
Continued on page 9
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Continued from page 8 – Marcus Garvey and the Black Star
Line
Although the ship made it in record time, it did not have
docking arrangements, so it lost money sitting in the
docks of Cuba while longshoremen had a strike. A
cargo-load of coconuts rotted in the hull of a ship on
another voyage because Garvey insisted on having the
ships make ceremonial stops at politically important
ports.
The Black Star Line stopped it operations in February
1922. It is seen as a better option of achievement for
African Americans of the time, despite the thievery by
employees, engineers who overcharged, and the Bureau
of Investigation's acts of infiltration and sabotage.
Marcus Garvey who is popularly called "black Moses"
during his lifetime, created the largest African American
organization, with hundreds of chapters across the world
at its height. While Garvey is remembered as Africa
proponent, it is clear that the scope of his ideas and the
UNIA’s actions go beyond that characterization.
Marcus Garvey's ideas originated with African
Americans during the postwar period. At the center of
Garvey's program was a strong backing on black
economic self-reliance, black people’s rights and
freedom to political self-determination, and the founding
of a black nation on the continent of Africa.
Perhaps the biggest achievement of the UNIVERSAL
NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION (UNIA,)
was the Black Star shipping Line, an enterprise intended
to provide ways for African Americans to return to
Africa while also enabling black people around the
Atlantic to exchange goods and services. The company’s
three ships (one called the SS Frederick Douglass) were
owned and operated by black people and made travel and
trade possible between their United States, Caribbean,
Central American, and African stops. The economically
independent Black Star Line was a symbol of pride for
blacks and seemed to attract more members to the
UNIA.
As an outcome of a bigger financial responsibility and
managerial errors, the Black Star Line failed in 1921 and
ended operations. Early in 1922 Garvey was charged on
mail fraud charges regarding the Black Star Line's stock
sale. Garvey was sentenced to prison but released after
serving three years in federal prison. He was deported to
Jamaica. In the United States Garveyism was the
development of the black attitude and pride at the center
of the twentieth-century freedom and movement.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey the name that continues to evoke
the inspire slogan: "Up you mighty race; you can
accomplish what you will."
Marcus Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay on Jamaica's
north coast. He was the youngest of eleven children. His
parents were said to be of unmixed Negroid stock. And his
father was a descendant of the Maroons, escaped slaves
who fought fierce guerilla battles for their liberation in the
Jamaican mountains. He was also largely self educated and
possessed a large library from which young Marcus began
his early reading. Young Marcus was very proud of the
Maroon lineage he inherited from his father.
Garvey dropped out of school early due to financial
troubles and he took a job as a printer apprentice to his
godfather. This allowed him to develop the journalistic
skills that proved beneficial later. He went to Kingston to
further his craft and began to experience first hand the
discrimination of Blacks in the trades. Whenever he went to
the British authorities to seek justice he found them to be
indifferent to the plight of his fellow Blacks. He concluded
from that, and other similar experiences, that Blacks could
never get equal treatment from whites.
Garvey became involved in organizing to help Blacks
improve their lot. Realizing that his efforts would require
more money, he went to Costa Rico where his uncle helped
him get a job as timekeeper on a banana plantation. Here
too he realized the deplorable conditions of Blacks. He
became involved in radical journalism and reform in order
to address these concerns. His uncle became disenchanted
with his efforts and sent him to Panama. There too Garvey
noticed similar conditions for Blacks. He traveled
throughout several countries in the area and found similar
conditions for his people. Illness brought him back to
Jamaica.
In 1912 he decided to go to London to learn about the
conditions of Blacks in other parts of the British Empire.
There he became associated with the Egyptian nationalist
Duse Mohammed Ali and he wrote for his monthly
magazine African Times and Orient Review. He also met
other young Black students from Africa and the West
Indies, African nationalists, sailors, and dock workers.
From them he received information about the condition of
Blacks throughout the world. He became an avid reader on
African subjects. One of the books he read,Up From
Slavery by Booker T. Washington, sparked his
determination to become a race leader.
-9- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
Garvey returned home to Jamaica in 1914 with ambitious
plans to uplift the race. He founded the Universal Negro
Improvement and Conservation Association and African
Community League, shortened to the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.), for the purpose of
"drawing the peoples of the race together." Among the
objectives of the Association was: ...to establish
Universities, Colleges and Secondary Schools for the
further education and culture of the boys and girls of the
Continued on page 10

Continued from page 9 – Marcus Garvey and the Black Star
Line
race; to conduct a world-wide commercial and industrial
intercourse.
(U.N.I.A. Manifesto, Booker T. Washington MSS,
Library of Congress.)
The motto of the Association was both inspirational and
succinct: "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"
Garvey received support from oppressed Blacks and some
whites, but little or none from well-to-do Blacks and
mulattoes. He soon felt the need to go to the United States
to raise funds. He had been in touch with Booker T.
Washington about his ideas toward educating his people.
However Washington died before he could make his trip
to the U.S. In 1916 when he did leave for the U.S. he
prophesied to his followers to "Look to Africa for the
crowning of a Black king, he will be the Redeemer."
These prophesy were to have a profound effect on the
later spiritual movement of the Rastafarians.
When Garvey arrived in the U.S. he stayed with a
Jamaican family in Harlem. He found work as a printer
and saved enough money to begin a fundraising tour
throughout the United States. Garvey's whirlwind tour
began in Harlem and proceeded through thirty-eight
states. Harlem had recently become converted into the
Black section of New York City and the virtual capital of
the Black world. So when he returned to New York he
chose to set up his headquarters there. Garvey moved into
the center on Harlem stage with all the ease and selfconfidence
of a man with a mission. He took to the
streets, joining the soapbox and stepladder orators and
form political alliances with some of Harlem's most
prominent radicals.
Garvey's first two attempts to establish a New York
chapter of the U.N.I.A. with headquarters in Jamaica were
sabotaged by socialists and Republicans who wanted to
turn it into a political club. In his third attempt he had
formed a cadre of thirteen like minded souls. This one too
had its divisions but Garvey was able to weather the
storm. And when Garvey decided to stay in the United
States the U.N.I.A. was incorporated in the state of New
York on July 2, 1918.
A month or so later the U.N.I.A.'s newspaper Negro
World, initially edited by Garvey, appeared. It would
eventually become the most widely circulated paper of its
kind and the bane of European colonialist. Garvey
embarked on a second fundraising tour. In November he
reportedly held a meeting in New York of five thousand
people. And by the next year, 1919, he was firmly
established as one of Harlem's most important figures.
During 1919 and 1920 the U.N.I.A experienced
spectacular growth. In the midst of the contemporary
Black disillusionment Garvey thundered his famous
slogan and battle cry: "Up, you mighty race! You can
accomplish what you will." The Black masses responded
by the thousands. New U.N.I.A. chapters were
established in most of the American cities with
significant Black populations. By the summer of 1919
Garvey had raised enough money to purchase a large
auditorium which he renamed Liberty Hall. Other
chapters would establish similar sites that would become
headquarters for race redemption and bastions of Black
freedom.
Earlier that year Garvey had begun speaking of Black
owned and operated steamships that would link Black
peoples of the world , uniting the Black Diaspora to the
African Motherland. This daring proposal quickly
captured the imagination of many of the Black masses.
Money was raised to purchase ships for the promised
Black Star Line. However, the attorney general of New
York warned Garvey not to sell stock unless the
enterprise was a legitimate business. Garvey then
incorporated the black Star Line in the state of Delaware
where the laws were more liberal.
Many laughed at Garvey's attempt to develop a ship line.
But Garvey pushed on and in mid-September announced
the viewing of the first ship the S.S. Yarmouth. Two
more ships were to follow. They were not in the best of
shape, and the price paid for them far exceeded their
value. Even though the purchases were ill advised, they
instilled pride and enthusiasm among his followers and
many of the Black masses worldwide. And support for
the Black Star ship line continued to pour in.
The Black Star Line was but one of Marcus Garvey's
visions for leading his people to economic independence.
He established the Negro Factories Corporation,
capitalized at one million dollars under a Delaware
charter. In practice, the corporation usually lacked funds
to lend to ambitious Black entrepreneurs, but it helped to
develop a chain of cooperative grocery stores, a
restaurant, steam laundry, tailor and dressmaking shop,
millinery store, and a publishing house.
With Garvey's successes arose the suspicions of his
adversaries. Some of his opposition was from sheer
jealousy while some was honest and logical. Among the
later was raised concerns about his business practices and
many of them felt that his followers would lose their
meager earnings. Among those questioning Garvey's
methods was W.E.B. Du Bois and there would be bitter
exchanges between them. Continued on page 11
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Continued from page 10 – Marcus Garvey and the Black Star
Line
Garvey pushed on. In late 1919 he issued a call for the
first international convention of the U.N.I.A. to be held in
August of 1920. Delegates were to come from throughout
the Black world. The Garveyites planned the convention
carefully and by any measure it was a resounding success
and a magnificent affair.
There were parades and pageantry of the uniformed
African Legion, and the Black Star Nurses, and the
children's auxiliary marching beside their elders.
Business came to a standstill and the parade was the talk
of Harlem for months. Now the world began to take
notice of Marcus Garvey as the event instilled a sense of
pride and awe throughout the Black world.
The 1920 convention produced a "Declaration of the
Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World." It compiled
grievances of the delegates against the wrong and
injustices of Negro people; it demanded and insisted upon
certain rights; etc. Perhaps the most enshrined legacy of
that convention was the presentation of the "Red, Black,
and Green" flag and the symbolism of its colors: red for
the "color of the blood which men must shed for their
redemption and liberty," black for "the color of the noble
and distinguished race to which we belong," and green
for "the luxuriant vegetation of our Motherland."
By 1921 Garvey was unquestioned leader of the largest
organization of this type in the history of the world. And
with his success came the rise in scrutiny and criticism
from his opponents. The US government considered him
subversive because of his radicalism; European
governments viewed him as a threat to their colonies;
communist felt he kept Black workers from their ranks;
civil right organizations were against him because he
argued that white segregationist were the true spokesmen
for white America and he advocated Black separatism.
Some of Garvey's troubles came from within his
organization from both unscrupulous opportunist and
from the lack of business acumen. The un-seaworthiness
of the ships they had purchased was beginning to take a
financial toll trying to keep them afloat. Finally on
January 12, 1921, the US government, using the fact that
the U.N.I.A. had used the postal services to sell stock for
their ship line, levied charges against him for alleged mail
fraud.
During his trial, Garvey had dismissed his attorney and
pled his on case. He gave a dazzling display of oratory;
but in the end, the jury found him guilty and he was given
the maximum penalty five years, $1000 fine, and costs.
While out on bail he sought to show his strength. He
raised $160,000 and bought a modern first class ship, which
he christened the Booker T. Washington. It sailed to the
West Indies after a great sendoff in New York City, but was
seized upon its return and sold to settle judgments that had
accumulated against him.
Garvey had sought an appeal from the U.S. Supreme Court
but lost and was taken to Atlanta penitentiary. All attempts
for a pardon failed, but in 1927 President Coolidge
commuted his sentence and he was deported to Jamaica.
While there he won a seat on the city council and continued
his agitation. And later went to London and continued his
efforts there also. He never regained his former stature, but
he continued speaking and agitating until his health began
to fail. On July 10, 1940 Marcus Mosiah Garvey died.
The flag of Ghana was designed by Mrs. Theodosia Okoh
to replace the flag of the United Kingdom upon attainment
of independence in 1957. It was flown until 1959, and then
reinstated in 1966. It consists of the Pan-African colors of
red, yellow, and green, in horizontal stripes, with a black
five-pointed star in the centre of the gold stripe. The black
star was adopted from the flag of the Black Star Line, a
shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey and gives the
Ghana national football team their nickname, the Black
Stars.
Conclusion
In conclusion the Black Star Line had a profound effect on
America, giving the blacks the opportunity to invest in
stock was new to the America country, and thus gave them
a modernized way of investing their money. Also it shows
that blacks could act as successful business men and
contribute economically to America. The fact that the Black
Star Line was an independent black movement showed that
blacks were capable of organizing international businesses.
Once scorned by the Jamaican power structure, Garvey is
regarded today as the father of Jamaican independence. The
capital city of Kingston named a road after him. The
government brought his remains home and laid them to rest
in a Marcus Garvey National Shrine. Marcus Mosiah
Garvey is now officially regarded a Jamaica's first national
hero. And his likeness now adorns Jamaican currency.The
social and cultural results of the Black Star Line were
unheard of in the 1920s, and consequently presented blacks
with more economic and social opportunities than ever
before.
The Black Star Line also created a great impact on the mind
of the black of unity. Marcus Garvey throught his Black
Star Line incorporation inspired most of the blacks to stand
on their own and fight for their rights. He paved the way for
Pan-Africanism; paved the way for Africa revolution and
became the first national hero of Jamaica.
Continued on page 12
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Continued from page 11 - Marcus Garvey and the Black
Star Line
Reference
wikipedia.org/wiki /Black_Star_Line
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/
Marcus Garvey’s Cultural legacy by Jimmy Tucker (17-18)
books.google.com.gh/books
www.duboislc.org/ShadesOfBlack/MarcusGarvey.
acapella.harmony-central.com/archive/
www.reggaeboyzsc.com
www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a.../garveyblackstar.htm
http://makafui2.blogspot.com/2011/01/marcus-garvey-andblack-star-line.html
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Continued from page 5 - The Impact of Marcus
Garvey
the Gold Coast later to be known as Ghana, Kwame
Nkrumah acknowledged his political indebtedness to the
political teachings of Marcus Garvey.
On September 7, 1957, Ghana became a free selfgoverning
nation, the first member of the British
Commonwealth of Nations to become self-governing.
Ghana would later develop a Black Star Line patterned
after the maritime dreams of Marcus Garvey. My point
here is that the African Independence Explosion, which
started with the independence of Ghana, was
symbolically and figuratively bringing the hopes of
Marcus Garvey alive.
In the Caribbean Islands the concept of Federation and
Political union of all the islands was now being looked
upon as a realizable possibility. Some constitutional
reforms and changing attitudes, born of this awareness,
were improving the life of the people of these islands.
In the United States the Supreme Court's decision of
1954, outlawing segregation in school systems was
greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by
African-Americans. A year after this decision the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides and the
demand for equal pay for Black teachers that
subsequently became a demand for equal education for
all, would become part of the central force that would
set the fight for liberation in motion.
The enemies of Africans, the world over were gathering
their counter-forces while a large number of them
pretended to be sympathetic to the African's cause.
Some of these pretenders, both Black and White, were
F.B.I. and other agents of the government whose
mission it was to frustrate and destroy the Civil Rights
Movement. In a different way the same thing was
happening in Africa.
The coups and counter-coups kept most African states
from developing into the strong independent and sovereign
states they had hoped to become.
While the Africans had gained control over their state's
apparatus, the colonialist's still controlled the economic
apparatus of most African states. Africans were
discovering to their amazement that a large number of the
Africans, who had studied abroad were a detriment to the
aims and goals of their nation. None of them had been
trained to rule an African state by the use of the best of
African traditional forms and strategies. As a result
African states, in the main, became imitations of European
states and most of their leaders could justifiably be called
Europeans with black faces. They came to power
without improving the lot of their people and these
elitist governments continue until this day.
In most cases what went wrong was that as these leaders
failed to learn the lessons of self-reliance and power
preparation as advocated by Marcus Garvey and in
different ways by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Dubois,
Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Africa became
infiltrated by foreign agents. Africans had forgotten, if
they knew at all, that Africa is the world's richest
continent, repository of the greatest mineral wealth in the
world. They had not asked themselves nor answered the
most critical question. If Africa is the world's richest
continent, why is it so full of poor people? Marcus Garvey
advocated that Africans control the wealth of Africa. He
taught that control, control of resources, control of self,
control of nation, requires preparation, Garveyism was
about total preparation.
There is still no unified force in Africa calling attention to
the need for this kind of preparation. This preparation calls
for a new kind of education if Africans are to face the
reality of their survival.
Africans in the United States must remember that the slave
ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no
Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this
hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people
and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the
places where slave ships dropped us off. In the 500 year
process of oppression the Europeans have displaced our
God, our culture, and our traditions. They have violated
our women to the extent that they have created a bastard
race who is confused as to whether to be loyal to its
mother's people or its fathers people and for the most part
they remain loyal to neither. I do not think African people
can succeed in the world until the hear again Marcus
Garvey's call: AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, THOSE
AT HOME AND ABROAD.
Continued on page 13
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Continued from page 12 - The Impact of Marcus Garvey
We must regain our confidence in ourselves as a people
and learn again the methods and arts of controlling
nations. We must hear again Marcus Garvey calling out
to us: UP! UP! YOU MIGHTY RACE! YOU CAN
ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL!
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/Garvey21.htm
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Continued from page 7 - Marcus Garvey and the
Universal Negro Improvement Association
other auxiliary groups such as the Black Cross Nurses.
Marcus Garvey with Potentate Gabriel M. Johnson of
Liberia, Supreme Deputy G.O. Marke of Sierra Leone, and
other UNIA leaders review the parade opening the 1922
UNIA convention,
New York City
Courtesy The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project,
UCLA
He was elected in 1920 as provisional President of
Africa by the members of the UNIA and dressed in a
military uniform with a plumed hat. At the UNIA's First
International Convention in 1920, people lined the
streets of Harlem to watch Garvey and his followers,
dressed in their military outfits, march to their meeting
under banners that read "We Want a Black Civilization"
and "Africa Must Be Free." All the pomp brought
Garvey ridicule from mainstream African-American
leaders, but it also served to inspire many African
Americans who had never seen black people so bold and
daring.
While racial pride and unity played important roles in
Garvey's black nationalism, he touted capitalism as the
tool that would establish African Americans as an
independent group. His message has been called the
evangel of black success, for he believed economic success
was the quickest and most effective way to independence.
Interestingly enough, it was white America that served as a
prime example of what blacks could accomplish. "Until you
produce what the white man has produced," he claimed,
"you will not be his equal."
In 1919 he established the Negro Factories Corporation and
offered stock for African Americans to buy. He wanted to
produce everything that a nation needed so that African
Americans could completely rely on their own efforts. At
one point the corporation operated three grocery stores, two
restaurants, a printing plant, a steam laundry, and owned
several buildings and trucks in New York City alone. His
most famous economic venture was a shipping company
known as the Black Star Line, a counterpart to a whiteowned
company called the White Star Line. Garvey started
the shipping company in 1919 as a way to promote trade
but also to transport passengers to Africa. He believed it
could also serve as an important and tangible sign of black
success. However the shipping company eventually failed
due to expensive repairs, mismanagement, and corruption.
With all his talk of a mighty race that would one day rule
Africa, it would have been foolish for Garvey to
underestimate the power of religion, particularly
Christianity, within the African-American community. The
churches served as the only arena in which African
Americans exercised full control. Not only did they serve as
houses of worship but also as meeting places that dealt with
social, economic, and political issues. Pastors were the
most powerful people in the community for they influenced
and controlled the community's most important institution.
Garvey knew the important place religion held, and he
worked hard to recruit pastors into his organization. He
enjoyed tremendous success at winning over leaders from
almost every denomination. One of those clergymen,
George Alexander McGuire, an Episcopalian, was elected
chaplain-general of the UNIA in 1920. McGuire wrote the
UNIA's official liturgy, the "Universal Negro Ritual" and
the "Universal Negro Catechism" that set forth the
teachings of the UNIA. He attempted to shape the UNIA
into a Christian black-nationalist organization. Garvey,
however, did not want the organization to take on the
trappings of one particular denomination, for he did not
want to offend any of its members. McGuire left UNIA in
1921 to begin his own church, the African Orthodox
Church, a black-nationalist neo-Anglican denomination that
kept close ties with the UNIA.
The UNIA meetings at Liberty Hall in Harlem were rich
with religious ritual and language, as Randall Burkett
Continued on page 14
-13- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 13 – Marcus Garvey and the
Universal Negro Improvement Association
points out in his book Black Redemption: Churchmen
Speak for the Garvey Movement. For even though
Garvey rejected McGuire's effort to transform the
UNIA into a black-nationalist Christian denomination,
he blended these two traditions in his message and in
the form of his UNIA meetings. A typical meeting
followed this order:
• The hymn "Shine On, Eternal Light," written
specifically for the UNIA by its music director
• A reading of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out
of Egypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her
hands unto God."
• The official opening hymn "From Greenland's Icy
Mountains," stating a commitment to the
Christianization of Africa
• Recitation of the official motto, "One God! One
Aim! One Destiny!"
• "The Lord's Prayer" and other prayers spoken by
the chaplain
• A sermon or some brief remarks
• The business meeting
• The closing hymn, either "Onward Christian
Soldiers" or the UNIA's national anthem, the
"Universal Negro Anthem."
Garvey's black nationalism blended with his Christian
outlook rather dramatically when he claimed that
African Americans should view God "through our own
spectacles." If whites could view God as white, then
blacks could view God as black. In 1924 the
convention canonized Jesus Christ as a "Black Man of
Sorrows" and the Virgin Mary as a "Black Madonna."
Garvey used that image as an inspiration to succeed in
this life, for African Americans needed to worship a
God that understood their plight, understood their
suffering, and would help them overcome their present
state. Garvey was not interested in promoting hope in
the afterlife. Success in this life was the key.
Achieving economic, cultural, social, and political
success would free African Americans in this life. The
afterlife would take care of itself. Perhaps Garvey's
greatest genius was taking that message of material,
social, and political success and transforming it into a
religious message, one that could lead to "conversion,"
one that did not challenge the basic doctrines of his
followers but incorporated them into the whole of his
vision. One of Garvey's top ministers gave witness to
the powerful effect of that message when he claimed in
1920, "I feel that I am a full-fledged minister of the African
gospel."
Garvey's message of Black Nationalism and a free black
Africa met considerable resistance from other African-
American leaders. W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon
Johnson of the NAACP, and Chandler Owen and A. Philip
Randolph of the publication Messenger, had their doubts
about Garvey. By 1922 his rhetoric shifted away from a
confrontational stance against white America to a position
of separatism mixed with just enough cooperation. He
applauded whites who promoted the idea of sending
African Americans back to Africa. He even met with a
prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1922 to
discuss their views on miscegenation and social equality.
That meeting only gave more fuel to his critics. In 1924
DuBois claimed that "Marcus Garvey is the most dangerous
enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world."
Owen and Randolph, whose paper saw the race issue as one
of class more than skin color, called Garvey the "messenger
boy of the Klan" and a "Supreme Negro Jamaican jackass"
while labeling his organization the "Uninformed Negroes
Infamous Association." The federal government also took
an interest in Garvey and in 1922 indicted him for mail
fraud. He was eventually sentenced to prison and began
serving his sentence in 1925. When his sentence was
commuted two years later, Garvey was deported to
Jamaica. With his imprisonment and deportation, his
organization in the United States lost much of its
momentum. Garvey spent the last years of his life in
London and died in 1940.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey
.htm
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Caribbean Groups want
Obama to Pardon Marcus
Garvey
July 5, 2012
The Gleaner
Garvey, a Jamaican political leader, orator and
entrepreneur, built the largest organisation of black people
in history.
The groups said his philosophy of Garveyism which called
for global economic independence, inspired movements for
Pan-African and Caribbean independence, Black
nationalism and civil rights.
The Marcus Garvey Celebrations Committee, the Institute
Continued on page 15
-14- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 14 – Caribbean Groups want Obama
to Pardon Marcus Garvey
of Caribbean Studies, and the Rootz Foundation have
cited Jamaica's 50th independence anniversary and
Garvey's 125th birthday in August, as “key reasons for
fashioning this collective campaign”.
Garvey is a national hero of Jamaica and the Rastafari
religion proclaim him as a prophet.
The organisations are the latest among several over the
years, to denounce Garvey’s convictions by the US
government in 1922 as a miscarriage of justice.
“The petition has the full support of Dr Julius Garvey,
Marcus Garvey's son,” said Justin Hansford, legal
counsel to the groups. “We hope that this effort will help
to undo the historic miscarriage of justice.”
On January 12, 1922, Garvey, who founded the United
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), was arrested
by BOI, forerunner to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, and charged with mail fraud.
In 1925, Garvey began serving a five-year sentence in a
US penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.
After several appeals, President Calvin Coolidge
eventually commuted his sentence and he was deported
to his native Jamaica. He died in London in 1940, aged
52.
Rootz Foundation President Priest Douglass Smith said
“the exoneration of the Honourable Prophet Marcus
Garvey is not just for Africans, but it is also a chance for
the perpetuators to atone for the gross injustice”.
Dr. Claire Nelson, the Jamaican-born architect of
National Caribbean American Heritage Month and
president of the Washington-based Institute of
Caribbean Studies, said “we want not just to exonerate
Garvey but also to help re-invigorate his vision of a
global trading company.”
The groups said they will celebrate “Universal Marcus
Garvey Day” on August 17.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/latest/article.php?id=38362
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“If You Believe the Negro
Has a Soul”: “Back to Africa”
with Marcus Garvey
Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey recognized that his
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
would find its most enthusiastic audience in the United
States, despite the organization’s professed worldwide
mission. After fighting World War I, ostensibly to
defend democracy and self-determination, thousands of
African-American soldiers returned home to find
intensified discrimination, segregation, racial violence,
and hostile relations with white Americans. Sensing
growing frustration, Garvey used his considerable
charisma to attract thousands of disillusioned black
working-class and lower middle-class followers and
became the most popular black leader in America in the
early 1920s. The UNIA, committed to notions of racial
purity and separatism, insisted that salvation for African
Americans meant building an autonomous, black-led
nation in Africa. To this end, the movement offered in its
“Back to Africa” campaign a powerful message of black
pride and economic self-sufficiency. In Garvey’s 1921
speech, “If You Believe the Negro Has a Soul,” he
emphasized the inevitability of racial antagonism and the
hopelessness of interracial coexistence.
Marcus Garvey: Fellow citizens of Africa, I greet you
in the name of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association and African Communities League of the
World. You may ask, “What organization is that?” It is
for me to inform you that the Universal Negro
Improvement Association is an organization that seeks to
unite, into one solid body, the four hundred million
Negroes in the world. To link up the fifty million
Negroes in the United States of America, with the twenty
million Negroes of the West Indies, the forty million
Negroes of South and Central America, with the two
hundred and eighty million Negroes of Africa, for the
purpose of bettering our industrial, commercial,
educational, social, and political conditions. As you are
aware, the world in which we live today is divided into
separate race groups and distinct nationalities. Each race
and each nationality is endeavoring to work out its own
destiny, to the exclusion of other races and other
nationalities. We hear the cry of “England for the
Englishman,” of “France for the Frenchman,” of
“Germany for the German,” of “Ireland for the Irish,” of
“Palestine for the Jew,” of “Japan for the Japanese,” of
“China for the Chinese.”
We of the Universal Negro Improvement Association are
raising the cry of “Africa for the Africans,” those at
home and those abroad. There are 400 million Africans
in the world who have Negro blood coursing through
their veins, and we believe that the time has come to
unite these 400 million people toward the one common
purpose of bettering their condition.
-15- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
The great problem of the Negro for the last 500 years has
been that of disunity. No one or no organization ever
succeeded in uniting the Negro race. But within the last
Continued to page 16

Continued from page 15 – “If You Believe the Negro Has a
Soul”
four years, the Universal Negro Improvement
Association has worked wonders. It is bringing
together in one fold four million organized Negroes
who are scattered in all parts of the world. Here in the
48 States of the American Union, all the West Indies
islands, and the countries of South and Central
America and Africa. These four million people are
working to convert the rest of the four hundred million
that are all over the world, and it is for this purpose,
that we are asking you to join our land and to do the
best you can to help us to bring about an emancipated
race. If anything stateworthy is to be done, it must be
done through unity, and it is for that reason that the
Universal Negro Improvement Association calls upon
every Negro in the United States to rally to this
standard. We want to unite the Negro race in this
country. We want every Negro to work for one
common object, that of building a nation of his own on
the great continent of Africa. That all Negroes all over
the world are working for the establishment of a
government in Africa, means that it will be realized in
another few years. We want the moral and financial
support of every Negro to make this dream a
possibility. Our race, this organization, has established
itself in Nigeria, West Africa, and it endeavors to do all
possible to develop that Negro country to become a
great industrial and commercial commonwealth.
Pioneers have been sent by this organization to Nigeria,
and they are now laying the foundations upon which
the four hundred million Negroes of the world will
build. If you believe that the Negro has a soul, if you
believe that the Negro is a man, if you believe the
Negro was endowed with the senses commonly given
to other men by the Creator, then you must
acknowledge that what other men have done, Negroes
can do. We want to build up cities, nations,
governments, industries of our own in Africa, so that
we will be able to have a chance to rise from the lowest
to the highest position in the African Commonwealth.
Source: Courtesy of the Marcus Garvey and the UNIA
Papers Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5124/
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White Propaganda About
Africa
"This propaganda of disassociating Western Negroes from
Africa is not a new one. For many years white propagandists
have been printing tons of literature to impress scattered
Ethiopia, especially that portion within their civilization,
with the idea that Africa is a despised place, inhabited by
savages, and cannibals, where no civilized human being
should go, especially black civilized human beings. This
propaganda is promulgated for the cause that is being
realized today. That cause is COLONIAL EXPANSION for
the white nations of the world."
—Marcus Garvey (Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey,
edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey)
http://www.africaspeaks.com/marcus_garvey/
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Marcus Garvey: Life & Lessons
What's in a name---to be precise, in the name Marcus
Garvey? A century after his birth, what should we know
about him and the extraordinary movement that bears his
name? The name Garvey has come to define both a discrete
social phenomenon, organized under the banner of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and
African Communities League (ACL), and an era of black
renaissance, in which Garveyism and the concept of black
racial pride became synonymous. Before white America fell
enraptured before the spell of what Claude McKay termed
"the hot syncopated fascination of Harlem" in the Jazz Age,
black America had already traversed the age of Garvey and
the New Negro.^1 Garveyism as an ideological movement
began in black Harlem's thirty or so square blocks in the
spring of 1918, and then burgeoned throughout the black
world---nearly a thousand UNIA divisions were formed, and
tens of thousands of members enrolled within the brief span
of seven years. The reign of the Garvey movement, as Rev.
Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., wrote, "awakened a race
consciousness that made Harlem felt around the world."
http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/mgpp/lifeintr.asp
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-16- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey
Edited by Amy Jacques-Garvey
The Journal of Pan African Studies 2009 eBook
February 23, 1923
EXCERPTS
HISTORY is the land-mark by which we are directed
into the true course of life.
The history of a movement, the history of a nation, the
history of a race is the guide-post of that movement's
destiny, that nation's destiny, that race's destiny.
What you do to-day that is worthwhile, inspires others to
act at some future time.
CHANCE has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering
people.
Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future
have been the only means by which the oppressed have
seen and realized the light of their own freedom.
LIFE is that existence that is given to man to live for a
purpose, to live to his own satisfaction and pleasure,
providing he forgets not the God who created him and
who expects a spiritual obedience and observation of the
moral laws that He has inspired.
There is nothing in the world common to man, that man
cannot do.
The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no
further than yourself; but the ends you serve that are for
all, in common, will take you even into eternity. It is only
the belief and the confidence we have in a God why man
is able to understand his own social institutions, and
move and live like a rational human being.
Take away the highest ideal—FAITH and
CONFIDENCE IN A GOD—and mankind at large is
reduced to savagery and the race destroyed. A race
without authority and power, is a race without respect.
CRITICISM is an opinion for good or ill, generally
indulged in by the fellow who knows more than anyone
else, yet the biggest fool. There is no criticism that calls
not forth yet another. The last critic is the biggest fool of
all, for the world starts and ends with him. He is the
source of all knowledge, yet knows nothing, for there is
not a word one finds to use that there is not another that
hath the same meaning, then wherefore do we criticize?
FEAR is a state of nervousness fit for children and not
men. When man fears a creature like himself he offends
God, in whose image and likeness he is created. Man
being created equal fears not man but God. To fear is to
lose control of one's nerves, one's will—to flutter, like a
dying fowl, losing consciousness, yet, alive.
AMBITION is the desire to go forward and improve
one's condition. It is a burning flame that lights up the life
of the individual and makes him see himself in another
state. To be ambitious is to be great in mind and soul. To
want that which is worth while and strive for it. To go on
without looking back, reaching to that which gives
satisfaction. To be humanly ambitious is to take in the
world which is the province of man; to be divinely
ambitious is to offend God by rivalling him in His infinite
Majesty.
ADMIRATION is a form of appreciation that is
sometimes mistaken for something else. There may be
something about you that suggests good fellowship when
kept at a distance, but in closer contact would not be
tolerated, otherwise it would be love.
RELIGION is one's opinion and belief in some ethical
truth. To be a Christian is to have the religion of Christ,
Continued on page 18
-17- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 17 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
and so to be a believer of Mohammed is to be a
Mohammedan but there are so many religions that every
man seems to be a religion unto himself. No two
persons think alike, even if they outwardly profess the
same faith, so we have as many religions in Christianity
as we have believers.
DEATH is the end of all life in the individual or the
thing; if physical, the crumbling of the body into dust
from whence it came. He who lives not uprightly, dies
completely in the crumbling of the physical body, but he
who lives well, transforms himself from that which is
mortal, to immortal.
FAITHFULNESS is actuated by a state of heart and
mind in the individual that changes not. No one is
wholely faithful to a cause or an object, except his heart
and mind remain firm without change or doubt. If one's
attitude or conduct changes toward an object, then one
has lost in one's faithfulness. It is a wholeness of belief
overshadowing all suspicion, all doubt, admitting of no
question; to serve without regret or disgust, to obligate
one's self to that which is promised Or expected, to keep
to our word and do our duty well. There are but few
faithful people now-a-days.
PROHIBITION—is to abstain from intoxicating
liquor, as it makes us morbid and sometimes drunk. But
we get drunk every day, nevertheless, not so much by
the strength of what we sip from the cup, but that which
we eat, the water we drink, and the air we inhale, which
at fermentation conspire at eventide to make us so drunk
and tired that we lose control of ourselves and fall
asleep. Everybody is a drunkard, and if we were to
enforce real prohibition we should all be dead.
There is no strength but that which is destructive,
because man has lost his virtues, and only respects
force, which he himself cannot counteract.
This is the day of racial activity, when each and every
group of this great human family must exercise its own
initiative and influence in its own protection, therefore,
Negroes should be more determined to-day than they
have ever been, because the mighty forces of the world
are operating against non-organized groups of peoples,
who are not ambitious enough to protect their own
interests.
Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work
towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and
mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the
constellation of nations.
A man's bread and butter is only insured when he works
for it.
The world has now reached the stage when humanity is
really at the parting of" the ways. It is a question of
"MAN MIND THYSELF."
The political readjustment of the world means that those
who are not sufficiently able, not sufficiently prepared,
will be at the mercy of the organized classes for another
one or two hundred years.
The only protection against INJUSTICE in man is
POWER—Physical, financial and scientific.
The masses make the nation and the race. If the masses
are illiterate, that is the judgment passed on the race by
those who are critical of its existence.
The function of the Press is public service without
prejudice or partiality, to convey the truth as it is seen and
understood without favoritism or bias.
EDUCATION is the medium by which a people are
prepared for the creation of their own particular
civilization, and the advancement and glory of their own
race.
NATIONHOOD is the only means by which modern
civilization can completely protect itself. Independence of
nationality, independence of government, is the means of
protecting not only the individual, but the group.
Nationhood is the highest ideal of all peoples.
The evolutionary scale that weighs nations and races,
balances alike for all peoples; hence we feel sure that
some day the balance will register a change for the Negro.
If we are to believe the Divine injunction, we must realize
that the time is coming when every man and every race
must return to its own "vine and fig tree."
Let Africa be our guiding Star—OUR STAR OF
DESTINY. Continued on page 19
-18- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 18 – Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus
Garvey
So many of us find excuses to get out of the Negro Race,
because we are led to believe that the race is unworthy—
that it has not accomplished anything. Cowards that we
are! It is we who are unworthy, because we are not
contributing to the uplift and up-building of this noble
race.
How dare anyone tell us that Africa cannot be redeemed,
when we have 400,000,000 men and women with warm
blood coursing through their veins?
The power that holds Africa is not Divine. The power that
holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever
man has done, man can do.
We of the Negro Race are moving from one state of
organization to another, and we shall so continue until we
have thoroughly lifted ourselves into the organization of
GOVERNMENT.
Be as proud of your race today as our fathers were in the
days of yore. We have a beautiful history, and we shall
create another in the future that will astonish the world.
WOMAN
What the night is to the day, is woman to man. The period
of change that brings us light out of darkness, darkness out
of light, and semi-light out of darkness are like the changes
we find in woman day by day.
She makes one happy, then miserable. You are to her kind,
then unkind. Constant yet inconstant. Thus we have
WOMAN. No real man can do without her.
LOVE
A happy but miserable state in which man finds himself
from time to time; sometimes he believes he is happy by
loving, then suddenly he finds how miserable he is. It is all
joy, it sweetens life, but it does not last. It comes and goes,
but when it is active, there is no greater virtue, because it
makes one supremely happy.
We cannot hold our love, but there is one love that never
changeth or is mistaken, and that is God's. The longer we
hold Our love, the nearer we approach like unto our
Creator.
The whole world is run on bluff. No race, no nation, no
man has any divine right to take advantage of others.
Why allow the other fellow to bluff you?
Every student of Political Science, every student of
Economics knows that the race can only be saved through
a solid industrial foundation. That the race can only be
saved through political independence. Take away
industry from a race; take away political freedom from a
race, and you have a group of slaves.
Peoples everywhere are travelling toward industrial
opportunities and greater political freedom. As a race
oppressed, it is for us to prepare ourselves that at any
time the great change in industrial freedom and political
liberty comes about, we may be able to enter into the new
era as partakers of the joys to be inherited.
Lagging behind in the van of civilization will not prove
our higher abilities. Being subservient to the will and
caprice of progressive races will not prove anything
superior in us. Being satisfied to drink of the dregs from
the cup of human progress will not demonstrate our
fitness as a people to exist alongside of others, but when
of our own initiative we strike out to build industries,
governments, and ultimately empires, then and only then
will we as a race prove to our Creator and to man in
general that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping
our own destiny.
The world ought to know that it could not keep
400,000,000 Negroes down forever.
There is always a turning point in the destiny of every
race, every nation, of all peoples, and we have come now
to the turning point of the Negro, where we have changed
from the old cringing weakling, and transformed into
full-grown men, demanding our portion as MEN.
I am not one of those Christians who believe that the
Bible can solve all the problems of humanity.
The Bible is good in its place, but we are men. We are the
creatures of God. We have sinned against Him, therefore
it takes more than the Bible to keep us in our places.
Man is becoming so vile that to-day we cannot afford to
convert him with moral, ethical, physical truths alone, but
with that which is more effective—implements of
destruction.
LEADERSHIP means everything—PAIN, BLOOD,
DEATH.
Continued on page 20
-19- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 19 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
To be prosperous in whatever we do is the sign of TRUE
WEALTH. We may be wealthy in not only having
money, but in spirit and health. It is the most helpful
agency toward a self-satisfying life. One lives, in an age
like this, nearer perfection by being wealthy than by
being poor. To the contended soul, wealth is the stepping
stone to perfection; to the miser it is the nearest avenue to
hell. I would prefer to be honestly wealthy, than
miserably poor.
To be free from temptation of other people's property is
to reflect the HONESTY of our own souls. There are but
few really honest people, in that between the thought and
the deed we make ourselves dishonest. The fellow who
steals, acts dishonestly. We can steal in thought as well as
in deed, therefore to be honest is a virtue that but few
indulge. To be honest is to be satisfied, having all,
wanting nothing. If you find yourself in such a state then
you are honest, if not the temptation of your soul is bound
to make you dishonest. This applies to the king and the
peasant alike.
All peoples are struggling to blast a way through the
industrial monopoly of races and nations, but the Negro
as a whole has failed to grasp its true significance and
seems to delight in filling only that place created for him
by the white man.
The Negro who lives on the patronage of philanthropists
is the most dangerous member of our society, because he
is willing to turn back the clock of progress when his
benefactors ask him so to do.
No race in the world is so just as to give others, for the
asking, a square deal in things economic, political and
social.
Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.
No one knows when the hour of Africa's Redemption
cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One day, like a
storm, it will be here. When that day comes all Africa
will stand together.
Any sane man, race or nation that desires freedom must
first of all think in terms of blood. Why, even the
Heavenly Father tells us that "without the shedding of
blood there can be no remission of sins?" Then how in
the name of God, with history before us, do we expect to
redeem Africa without preparing ourselves—some of us
to die.
I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess
to oppress the human race, but we will use our strength,
physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity
and civilization.
For over three hundred years the white man has been our
oppressor, and he naturally is not going to liberate us to
the higher freedom—the truer liberty—the truer
Democracy. We have to liberate ourselves.
Every man has a right to his own opinion. Every race has
a right to its own action; therefore let no man persuade
you against your will, let no other race influence you
against your own.
The greatest weapon used against the Negro is
DISORGANIZATION.
If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated
in the race of life. With confidence you have won even
before you have started.
At no time within the last five hundred years can one
point to a single instance of the Negro as a race of haters.
The Negro has loved even under severest punishment. In
slavery the Negro loved his master, he safe-guarded his
home even when he further planned to enslave him. We
are not a race of Haters, but Lovers of humanity's Cause.
Mob violence and injustice have never helped a race or a
nation, and because of this knowledge as gathered from
the events of ages, we as a people in this new age desire
to love all mankind, not in the social sense, but in
keeping with the Divine Injunction "MAN LOVE THY
BROTHER."
PREPAREDNESS is the watch-word of this age. For us
as a race to remain, as we have been in the past—divided
among ourselves, parochializing, insularizing and
nationalizing our activities as subjects and citizens of the
many alien races and governments under which we live—
is but to hold ourselves in readiness for that great
catastrophe that is bound to come—that of racial
extermination, at the hands of the stronger race—the race
that will be fit to survive.
Continued on page 21
-20- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 20 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
Humanity takes revenging crime from one age to the
next, according to the growth and development of the
race so afflicted.
But the perpetuation of crime through revenge and
retaliation will not save the human race.
Europe is bankrupt today, and every nation within her
bounds is endeavoring to find new openings, new fields
for exploitation—that exploitation that will bring to them
the resources, the revenue and the power necessary for
their rehabilitation and well-being.
We are living in a strenuous, active age, when men see,
not through the spectacles of sympathy, but demand that
each and every one measures up in proportion to the
world's demand for service.
The attitude of the white race is to subjugate, to exploit,
and if necessary exterminate the weaker peoples with
whom they come in contact.
They subjugate first, if the weaker peoples will stand for
it; then exploit, and if they will not stand for
SUBJUGATION nor EXPLOITATION, the other
recourse is EXTERMINATION.
If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison
of modem civilization and die from the effects of it.
There can be no peace among men and nations, so long as
the strong continues to oppress the weak, so long as
injustice is done to other peoples, just so long will we
have cause for war, and make a lasting peace an
impossibility.
Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human
life.
I am not opposed to the white race as charged by my
enemies. I have no time to hate anyone. All my time is
devoted to the up-building and development of the Negro
Race.
When nations outgrow their national limits, they make
war and conquer other people's territory so as to have an
outlet for their surplus populations.
The world does not count races and nations that have
nothing.
Point me to a weak nation and I will show you a people
oppressed, abused, taken advantage of by others.
Show me a weak race and I will show you a people
reduced to serfdom, peonage and slavery.
Show me a well organized nation, and I will show you a
people and a nation respected by the world.
The battles of the future, whether they be physical or
mental, will be fought on scientific lines, and the race that
is able to produce the highest scientific development, is
the race that will ultimately rule.
Let us prepare TODAY. For the TOMORROWS in the
lives of the nations will be so eventful that Negroes
everywhere will be called upon to play their part in the
survival of the fittest human group.
Let us in shaping our own Destiny set before us the
qualities of human JUSTICE, LOVE, CHARITY,
MERCY AND EQUITY. Upon such foundation let us
build a race, and I feel that the God who is Divine, the
Almighty Creator of the world, shall forever bless this
race of ours, and who to tell that we shall not teach men
the way to life, liberty and true human happiness?
Day by day we hear the cry of "AFRICA FOR THE
AFRICANS." This cry has become a positive, determined
one. It is a cry that is raised simultaneously the world
over, because of the universal oppression that affects the
Negro.
All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishment
of an African Empire—so strong and powerful, as to
compel the respect of mankind, but we in our life-time
can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility
within another generation.
Propaganda
We are living in a civilization that is highly developed.
We are living in a world that is scientifically arranged in
which everything done by those who control is done
through system; proper arrangement, proper organization,
and among some of the organized methods used to
control the world is the thing known and called
"propaganda."
Continued on page 22
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Continued from page 21 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
Propaganda has done more to defeat the good intentions
of races and nations than even open warfare.
Propaganda is a method or medium used by organized
peoples to convert others against their will.
We of the Negro race are suffering more than any other
race in the world from propaganda— Propaganda to
destroy our hopes, our ambitions and our confidence in
self.
Slavery
Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races
not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and
so long as a race or people expose themselves to the
danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be
reduced to slavery.
When a man is a slave he has no liberty of action; no
freedom of will, he is bound and controlled by the will
and act of others; as of the individual, so of the race.
Slavery is not a condition confined to anyone age or race
of people. Slavery has been since man in the different
distribution of himself, scattered here, there and
everywhere, has grown and developed, wherein one race
will become strong and the other race remains weak. The
strong race has always reduced the weak to slavery. It has
been so in ages past, it is so now in certain parts of the
world, and will be so until the end of time.
The great British nation was once a race of slaves. In
their own country they were not respected because the
Romans went there, brutalized and captured them, took
them over to Rome and kept them in slavery. They were
not respected in Rome because they were regarded as a
slave race.
But the Briton did not always remain a slave. As a freed
man he went back to his country (Britain) and built up a
civilization of his own, and by his self-reliance and
initiative he forced the respect of mankind and maintains
it until today.
Education
To be learned in all that is worthwhile knowing. Not to be
crammed with the subject matter of the book or the
philosophy of the class room, but to store away in your
head such facts as you need for the daily application of
life, so that you may the better in all things understand
your fellowmen, and interpret your relationship to your
Creator.
You can be educated in soul, vision and feeling, as well
as in mind. To see your enemy and know him is a part of
the complete education of man; to spiritually regulate
one's self is another form of the higher education that fits
man for a nobler place in life, and still, to approach your
brother by the feeling of your own humanity, is an
education that softens the ills of the world and makes us
kind indeed.
Many a man was educated outside the school room. It is
something you let out, not completely take in. You are
part of it, for it is natural; it is dormant simply because
you will not develop it, but God creates every man with it
knowingly or unknowingly to him who possesses it, that's
the difference. Develop yours and you become as great
and full of knowledge as the other fellow without even
entering the class room.
Miscegenation
Some of the men of the Negro race aggravate the race
question because they force the white man to conclude
that to educate a black man, to give him opportunities, is
but to fit him to be a competitor for the hand of his
woman; hence the eternal race question.
But not all black men are willing to commit race suicide
and to abhor their race for the companionship of another.
There are hundreds of millions of us black men who are
proud of our skins and to us the African Empire will not
be a Utopia, neither will it be dangerous nor fail to serve
our best interests, because we realize that like the leopard
we cannot change our skins.
The men of the highest morals, highest character and
noblest pride are to be found among the masses of the
Negro race who love their women with as much devotion
as white men love theirs.
Prejudice
Prejudice of the white race against the black race is not so
much because of color as of condition; because as a race,
to them, we have accomplished nothing; we have built no
nation, no government; because we are dependent for our
economic and political existence. You can never curb the
prejudice of the one race or nation against the other by
law. It must be regulated by one's own feeling, one's own
will, and if one's feeling and will rebel against you no law
in the world can curb it.
Prejudice can be actuated by different reasons.
Sometimes the reason is economic, and sometimes
political. You can only obstruct it by progress and force.
Evolution and the Result
Evolution bring us changes that sometimes make us fail
to recognize ourselves even after a lapse of centuries.
Continued on page 23
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Continued from page 22 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
When the great white race of today had no civilization of
its own, when white men lived in caves and were counted
as savages, this race of ours boasted of a wonderful
civilization on the banks of the Nile.
It may sound good for some Negroes to say that they
were born here or there, and they do not intend to go
anywhere else but where they saw the light of day. But let
me say to you men, the world is small and humanity in
the many and various race groups, is growing larger
every day. A race that was ten millions fifty years ago is
today sixty millions. A race that was thirty millions fifty
years ago is today ninety millions; how many will they be
tomorrow and the world is not growing larger?
What will happen through the multiplication of all these
various race groups, of those who are in power, of those
who are strong, those who have at their command the
forces of nature, through which they can exploit the weak
and ultimately exterminate them? What will happen to
you, the weak and unprepared, when the strong becomes
more numerous even though the world remains at its
present size?
Ah, if you will but think down the future and compare the
possibilities of that future with the happenings of the past
you will come to the conclusion that there is no other
salvation for the Negro but through a free and
independent Africa.
Whilst geographically speaking the world has ever been
in its natural divisions as we know it, and see it, yet,
politically speaking, the world has changed, and is still
changing. Yesterday we had the Roman empire, we had
the Grecian empire, we had even before the Carthaginian,
the Assyrian and the Babylonian empires. What has
become of them? They have gone into the oblivion of the
past, because of human progress, because of the
development of certain races as against the stagnation of
others; but even yesterday we also had the great German
empire; we had the Russian empire; we had the empire of
Austria and Hungary. Where are they now? They too, are
travelling toward the oblivion of the past. Today we have
the great French empire, the British empire and other
great commonwealths. Will they stand?
Ah, I think not, because evolution and human progress
bring changes, and in the changes no man can tell what
will happen tomorrow as against what exists today.
Therefore, I say to the four hundred million Negroes of
the world, prepare yourselves for the higher life, the life
of liberty, industrially, educationally, socially and
politically.
Poverty
A hellish state to be in. It is no virtue. It is a crime. To
be poor, is to be hungry without possible hope of food;
to be sick without hope of medicine; to be tired and
sleepy without a place to lay one's head; to be naked
without the hope of clothing; to be despised and
comfortless. To be poor is to be a fit subject for crime
and hell. The hungry man steals bread and thereby
breaks the eighth commandment; by his state he breaks
all the laws of God and man and becomes an outcast. In
thought and deed he covets his neighbor's goods;
comfortless as he is he seeks his neighbor's wife; to him
there is no other course but sin and death. That is the
way of poverty. No one wants to be poor.
Power
Power is the only argument that satisfies man. Except
the individual, the race or the nation has POWER that
is exclusive; it means that that individual, race or nation
will be bound by the will of the other who possesses
this great qualification.
It is the physical and pugilistic power of Harry Wills
that makes white men afraid to fight him.
It was the industrial and scientific power of the
Teutonic race that kept it for years as dictator of the
economic and scientific policies of Europe.
It is the naval and political power of Great Britain that
keeps her mistress of the seas.
It is the commercial and financial power of the United
States of America that makes her the greatest banker in
the world. Hence it is advisable for the Negro to get
power of every kind.
Power in education, science, industry, politics and
higher government. That kind of power that will stand
out signally, so that other races and nations can see, and
if they will not see, then feel.
Man is not satisfied or moved by prayers or petitions,
but every man is moved by that power of authority
which forces him to do even against his will.
Dissertation on Man
Man is the individual who is able to shape his own
character, master his own will, direct his own life and
shape his own ends.
When God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath
of life, he made him a living soul, and bestowed upon
him the authority of "Lord of Creation," He never
intended that that individual should descend to the level
of a peon, a serf, or a slave, but that he should be
Continued on page 24
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Continued from page 23 - Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus
Garvey
always man in the fullest possession of his senses, and
with the truest knowledge of himself. But how changed
has man become since creation?" We find him today
divided into different classes—the helpless imbecile, the
dependent slave, the servant and the master. These
different classes God never created. He created man. But
this individual has so retrograded, as to make it impossible
to find him—a real man.
As far as the Negro race is concerned, we can find but few
real men to measure up to the higher purpose of the
creation, and because of this lack of manhood in the race,
we have stagnated for centuries and now find ourselves at
the foot of the great human ladder.
After the creation, and after man was given possession of
the world, the Creator relinquished all authority to his lord,
except that which was spiritual. All that authority which
meant the regulation of human affairs, human society, and
human happiness was given to man by the Creator, and
man, therefore, became master of his own destiny, and
architect of his own fate.
In process of time we find that only a certain type of man
has been able to make good in God's creation. We find
them building nations, governments and empires, as also
great monuments of commerce, industry and education
(these men realizing the power given them exerted every
bit of it to their own good and to their posterity's) while,
on the other hand, 400,000,000 Negroes who claim the
common Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man,
have fallen back so completely, as to make us today the
serfs and slaves of those who fully know themselves and
have taken control of the world, which was given to all in
common by the Creator.
I desire to impress upon the 400,000,000 members of my
race that our failings in the past, present and of the future
will be through our failures to know ourselves and to
realize the true functions of man on this mundane sphere.
Race Assimilation
Some Negro leaders have advanced the belief that in
another few years the white people will make up their
minds to assimilate their black populations; thereby
sinking all racial prejudice in the welcoming of the black
race into the social companionship of the white. Such
leaders further believe that by the amalgamation of black
and white, a new type will spring up, and that type will
become the American and West Indian of the future. This
belief is preposterous. I believe that white men should be
white, yellow men should be yellow, and black men
should be black in the great panorama of races, until
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each and every race by its own initiative lifts itself up
to the common standard of humanity, as to compel the
respect and appreciation of all, and so make it possible
for each one to stretch out the hand of welcome without
being able to be prejudiced against the other because of
any inferior and unfortunate condition.
The white man of America will not, to any organized
extent, assimilate the Negro, because in so doing, he
feels that he will be committing racial suicide. This he
is not prepared to do. It is true he illegitimately carries
on a system of assimilation; but such assimilation, as
practiced, is one that he is not prepared to support
because he becomes prejudiced against his own
offspring, if that offspring is the product of black and
white; hence, to the white man the question of racial
differences is eternal. So long as Negroes occupy an
inferior position among the races and nations of the
world, just so long will others be prejudiced against
them, because it will be profitable for them to keep up
their system of superiority. But when the Negro by his
own initiative lifts himself from his low state to the
highest human standard he will be in a position to stop
begging and praying, and demand a place that no
individual, race or nation will be able to deny him.
The Function of Man
God placed man on earth as the lord of Creation. The
elements—all nature are at his command—it is for him
to harness them subdue them, and use them.
Edison harnessed electricity. Today the world reflects
the brilliancy of his grand illumination.
Stephenson, through experiments, has given us the use
of the steam engine, and today the railroad train flies
across the country at a speed of sixty miles an hour.
Marconi conquered the currents of the air and today we
have wireless telegraphy that flashes news across the
continents with a rapidity never yet known to man.
All this reveals to us that man is the supreme lord of
creation, that in man lies the power of mastery, a
mastery of self, a mastery of all things created, bowing
only to the almighty architect in those things that are
spiritual, in those things that are divine.
Traitors
In the fight to reach the top the oppressed have always
been encumbered by the traitors of their own race,
made up of those of little faith and those who are
generally susceptible to bribery for the selling out of
the rights of their own people. As Negroes, we are not
entirely free of such an encumbrance. To be outspoken,
Continued on page 25

Continued from page 24 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
I believe we are more encumbered in this way than any
other race in the world, because of the lack of training
and preparation for fitting us for our place in the world
among nations and races. The traitor of other races is
generally confined to the mediocre or irresponsible
individual, but, unfortunately, the traitors among the
Negro race are generally to be found among the men
highest placed in education and society, the fellows who
call themselves leaders. For us to examine ourselves
thoroughly as a people we will find that we have more
traitors than leaders, because nearly everyone who essays
to lead the race at this time does so by first establishing
himself as the pet of some philanthropist of another race,
to whom he will go and debase his race in the worst form,
humiliate his own manhood, and thereby win the
sympathy of the "great benefactor", who will dictate to
him what he should do in the leadership of the Negro
race.
Present Day Civilization
We are circumvented today by environments more
dangerous than those which circumvented other peoples
in any other age. We are face to face with environments
in a civilization that is highly developed; a civilization
that is competing with itself for its own destruction; a
civilization that cannot last, because it has no spiritual
foundation; a civilization that is vicious, crafty, dishonest,
immoral, irreligious and corrupt.
We see a small percentage of the world's populace feeling
happy and contented with this civilization that man has
evolved, and we see the masses of the human race on the
other hand dissatisfied and discontented with the
civilization of today—the arrangement of human society.
Those masses are determined to destroy the systems that
hold up such a society and prop such a civilization. As by
indication, the fall will come. A fall that will cause the
universal wreck of the civilization that we now see, and
in this civilization the Negro is called upon to play his
part. He is called upon to evolve a national ideal, based
upon freedom, human liberty and true democracy.
Cause of Wars
The world is not yet perfect. It is in chaos; yes, in
confusion and out of this confusion will come many more
upheavals that will shake its very foundation. Fool not
yourselves that the conferences that have been held, and
will be held in the future, are sufficient to settle the
disgruntled state of the world, and the dissatisfied
condition of humanity.
They have not gone down to the root of all evils that
give cause to the great discontent, they will never be
able to establish a permanent peace and present to us a
settled world.
The history of the past teaches us that we have had many
wars, each more deadly, each more catastrophic, and
even as the war of 1914-18 was the most deadly we have
experienced for ages, so in the very near future we shall
see the most bloody conflict ever waged by man.
Whether it is to be a war of the races or of the nations,
no one can tell, but so long as this injustice continues; so
long as the strong continues to oppress the weak; so long
as the powerful nations arrange among themselves to
oppress the weaker ones, and to keep the more
unfortunate of humanity in serfdom, and to rob and
exploit them, so long will the cause of war be fed with
the fuel of revenge, of hatred, and of discontent.
The Fall of Governments
The fall of nations and empires has always come about
first by the disorganized spirit,—the disorganized sentiment
of those who make up the nation or the empire.
The one class opposing, fighting against the other, the
other class seeking to deprive them of the essentials of
life which are necessary for the good and well-being of
all. The class that ruled in the past and the class that
rules now in government, are the people who have
always provoked the spirit of those who are ruled. Hence
you have social revolutions, civil strife, which ultimately
result in the downfall of the empire or the nation. What
has happened in the past will happen again. I am not
attempting to prophesy the destruction of any of the now
exiting empires or nations, but the empires and nations
themselves are going to their own ruin. In Europe we
hear of great industrial unrests.
Laborers uniting themselves and marching to the
representatives of governments asking for better
conditions to alleviate their suffering. Instead of the
representatives seeking to pacify and satisfy those who
are in need, the representatives of such governments
adopt a strong-armed policy to prosecute and persecute
those who suffer and appeal for aid from the nation or
the empire.
What happens? The dissatisfied who are driven away by
the majesty of the law, go back to those who suffer with
them and scatter throughout the nation or the empire the
spirit of dissatisfaction that ultimately breaks out in civil
strife, social disorder, which in turn brings the downfall
of the nation or the empire.
People who rule (being selected by the masses of their
Continued on page 26
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Continued from page 25 – Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus
Garvey
own) forget when they come into power that they have an
obligation to those who placed them in authority and
through selfishness arrogate to themselves all that is good
within the nation to the exclusion of those who suffer and
to the exclusion of those who placed them in their positions
of trust. Hence Monopoly—industrial, commercial and
economic—which places power in the hands of the select
few, and through the selfishness of administration by the
few they cause the majority of the masses to exist always in
want. Through this want, a spirit of dissatisfaction springs
up among the people, and they, in their passion, seeking to
correct the evil, tear down governments.
Purity of Race
I believe in a pure black race just as how all self-respecting
whites believe in a pure white race, as far as that can be. I
am conscious of the fact that slavery brought upon us the
curse of many colors within the Negro race, but that is no
reason why we of ourselves should perpetuate the evil;
hence instead of encouraging a wholesale bastardy in the
race, we feel that we should now set out to create a race
type and standard of our own which could not, in the future,
be stigmatized by bastardy, but could be recognized and
respected as the true race type anteceding even our own
time.
Man Know Thyself
For man to know himself is for him to feel that for him
there is no human master. For him Nature is his servant,
and whatsoever he wills in Nature, that shall be his reward.
If he wills to be a pigmy, a serf or a slave, that shall he be.
If he wills to be a real man in possession of the things
common to man, then he shall be his own sovereign.
When man fails to grasp his authority he sinks to the level
of the lower animals, and whatsoever the real man bids him
do, even as if it were of the lower animals, that much shall
he do. If he says "go." He goes. If he says "come," he
comes. By this command he performs the functions of life
even as by a similar command the mule, the horse, the cow
performs the will of their masters. For the last four hundred
years the Negro has been in the position of being
commanded even as the lower animals are controlled. Our
race has been without a will; without a purpose of its own,
for all this length of time. Because of that we have
developed few men who are able to understand the
strenuousness of the age in which we live.
Where can we find in this race of ours real men? Men of
character, men of purpose, men of confidence, men of faith,
men who really know themselves? I have come across so
many weaklings who profess to be leaders, and in the test I
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have found them but the slaves of a nobler class. They
perform the will of their masters without question.
To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his
authority is a sovereign lord. As for the individual man,
so of the individual race. This feeling makes man so
courageous, so bold, as to make it impossible for his
brother to intrude upon his rights. So few of us can
understand what it takes to make a man—the man who
will never say die; the man who will never give up; the
man who will never depend upon others to do for him
what he ought to do for himself; the man who will not
blame God, who will not blame Nature, who will not
blame Fate for his condition; but the man who will go
out and make conditions to suit himself. Oh, how
disgusting life becomes when on every hand you hear
people (who bear your image, who bear your
resemblance) telling you that they cannot make it, that
Fate is against them, that they cannot get a chance. If
400,000,000 Negroes can only get to know themselves,
to know that in them is a sovereign power, is an
authority that is absolute, then in the next twenty-four
hours we would have a new race, we would have a
nation, an empire, resurrected, not from the will of
others to see us rise,—but from our own determination
to rise, irrespective of what the world thinks.
The Image of God
If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him
worship his God as he desires. If the yellow man's God
is of his race let him worship his God as he sees fit.
We, as Negroes, have found a new ideal. Whilst our
God has no color, yet it is human to see everything
through one's own spectacles, and since the white
people have seen their God through white spectacles,
we have only now started out (late though it be) to see
our God through our own spectacles. The God of Isaac
and the God of Jacob let Him exist for the race that
believes in the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. We
Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting
God—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy
Ghost, the One God of all ages. That is the God in
whom we believe, but we shall worship Him through
the spectacles of Ethiopia.
Examples of White Christian Control of Africa
The world has seen many fair examples of white
Christian control of Africa: The outrages of Leopold of
Belgium, when he butchered thousands of our
defenseless brothers and sisters in the Belgian Congo,
and robbed them of their rubber.
The natives of Kenya South East Africa armed with
sticks and stones rebelled against the injustices and
Continued on page 27

Continued from page 27 – Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey
brutality of the English, and were hewn down by
machine guns, because they aid not supply the demands
of the invaders.
The Hottentots of South West Africa in rebellion against
similar brutality and exploitation, using spears and
leather shields to protect themselves, were bombed from
airplanes by the Christian whites.
The above are but few examples of the many atrocities
committed on our defenseless brothers and sisters in
Africa by white exploiters and invaders. Surely the
introduction of chemical gas among the natives of Africa
would place them in a better position to handle "the alien
disturbers of African peace."
It strikes me that with all the civilization this Western
Hemisphere affords, Negroes ought to take better
advantage of the cause of higher education. We could
make of ourselves better mechanics and scientists, and in
cases where we can help our brothers in Africa by
making use of the knowledge we possess, it would be
but our duty, If Africa is to be redeemed the Western
Negro will have to make a valuable contribution along
technical and scientific lines.
The Thought Behind Their Deeds
Behind the murder of millions of Negroes annually in
Africa is the well organized system of exploitation by
the alien intruders who desire to rob Africa of every bit
of its wealth for the satisfaction of their race and the
upkeep of their bankrupt European countries.
If we of the Western World take no interest in the higher
development of the African natives, it will mean that in
another hundred years historians and writers will tell us
that the black man once inhabited Africa, just as the
North American Indian once inhabited America. But
those of us who lead are well versed In Western
civilization and are determined that the black man shall
not be a creature of the past, but a full-fledged man of
the present and a power to be reckoned with in the
future.
http://www.wordowner.com/garvey/chapter1.htm
http://www.jpanafrican.com/ebooks/eBook%20Phil%20and%
20Opinions.pdf
☻☻☻☻☻☻
May 27, 2003
The Marcus Garvey's
Statement called
Rastafari "Prophecy"
Below is the article many Rastafarians refer to as
the Prohecy by Marcus Garvey. It was published
November 8, 1930 in his Jamaican newspaper, The
Blackman:
Last Sunday, a great ceremony took place at Addis
Ababa, the capital of Abyssinia. It was the coronation
of the new Emperor of Ethiopia -- Ras Tafari. From
reports and expectations, the scene was one of great
splendor, and will long be remembered by those who
were present. Several of the leading nations of Europe
sent representatives to the coronation, thereby paying
their respects to a rising Negro nation that is destined to
play a great part in the future history of the world.
Abyssinia is the land of the blacks and we are glad to
learn that even though Europeans have been trying to
impress the Abyssinians that they are not belonging to
the Negro Race, they have learned the retort that they
are, and they are proud to be so.
Ras Tafari has traveled to Europe and America and is
therefore no stranger to European hypocrisy and
methods; he, therefore, must be regarded as a kind of a
modern Emperor, and from what we understand and
know of him, he intends to introduce modern methods
and systems into his country. Already he has started to
recruit from different sections of the world competent
men in different branches of science to help to develop
his country to the position that she should occupy
among the other nations of the world.
We do hope that Ras Tafari will live long to carry out
his wonderful intentions. From what we have heard and
what we do know, he is ready and willing to extend the
hand of invitation to any Negro who desires to settle in
his kingdom. We know of many who are gone to
Abyssinia and who have given good report of the great
possibilities there, which they are striving to take
advantage of.
The Psalmist prophesied that Princes would come out
of Egypt and Ethiopia would stretch forth her hands
unto God. We have no doubt that the time is now come.
Ethiopia is now really stretching forth her hands. This
great kingdom of the East has been hidden for many
centuries, but gradually she is rising to take a leading
place in the world and it is for us of the Negro race to
assist in every way to hold up the hand of Emperor Ras
Tafari.
http://www.jamaicans.com/culture/rasta/MarcusGarveyProhe
cy.shtml
☻☻☻☻☻☻
-27- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
The Economics of Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey directed the largest mass-based
movement among African Americans in the history
of the United States. His phenomenal success came
at a time when African American confidence was
low and unemployment was considered a way of life.
Garvey harnessed these conditions to build
momentum for his cause.
While his worldwide accomplishments and
controversies have been analyzed by numerous
scholars (Rogoff and Trinkaus, 1998), this paper
investigates the economic thoughts of Marcus
Garvey. Specifically, it visits Garvey's capitalistic
approach to the economic development of African
Americans in the United States. It was suggested by
W.E.B. DuBois (1940) that Garvey's business
ventures failed because of incompetence and
economic ineptitude. However, Marcus Garvey's
plan for African American capitalism was an
enormous contribution because his ill-fated business
enterprises became the procedural and conceptual
model for future achievements in African American
economic development.
A people without the knowledge of their past
history, origin and culture is like a tree without
roots-- Marcus Garvey
Economic Self-Sufficiency
On March 23, 1916, after corresponding with Booker
T. Washington, Garvey arrived in the United States
to connect his movement to Washington's movement
in Tuskegee, Alabama (Stein, 1986). However,
Washington died before Garvey arrived. Stein (1986)
noted that Garvey came to the U.S. at a time when a
new economic order was anchored to American
prosperity. A sweeping increase in technological
innovations of mass production techniques and new
machinery increased American output 13 percent
while consequently reducing the workforce 8 per
Pan-African Development
By AfricanHolocaust.net
-28- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
cent. Profits were soaring as a 29 percent increase in
worker productivity was complemented by only a 4.5
percent increase in real wages. Organized African
American unions were suffering as the power of the
American capitalists increased.
Garvey had admired Washington's business ownership
approach toward self-reliance. He agreed that other
forms of advancement would follow economic
development. However, he saw a flaw in Washington's
approach. Specifically, he believed that focusing
primarily on individual entrepreneurial advancement
would fail to promote community development because
individual profit motives would impede group
advancement. In order to promote the collective
interests of African Americans, Garvey sought to use
collective decision making and group profit sharing.
Thus, Garvey created a Nationalist version of
Washington's economic program that resulted in mass
organization supported by millions of African
Americans (Allen, 1969).
Garvey believed that African Americans were
universally oppressed and any program of emancipation
would have to be built around the question of race. In
his mind, African Americans would aspire to positions
of influence if they had educational opportunities, and
this would bring them into direct competition with the
white power structure. However, he believed that within
100 years, such a position would lead to racial strife
which would be disastrous for them (Sertima, 1988).
Hence, his theory of racial separation was born. It was a
stratagem to ensure self-reliance and equality for the
downtrodden African race, but it did not stress racial
superiority. Garvey stated:
The Negro is ignored today simply because he has
kept himself backward; but if he were to try to raise
himself to a higher state in the civilized cosmos, all the
other races would be glad to meet him on the plane of
Continued on page 29

Continued from page 28 – The Economics of Marcus Garvey
equality and comradeship--Marcus Garvey (Martin,
1976)
The urgency that he felt for racial independence and selfreliance
existed because he believed African Americans
suffered in the face of enormous economic superiority
and power of the white world. He thought that they
should strive to first build a solid industrial foundation
and the consequential success would allow African
Americans to shape their own destiny.
Within months of his arrival in the United States, Garvey
began to research the economic position of African
Americans. He wrote:
The acme of American Negro enterprise is not yet
reached. You have still a far way to go. You want more
stores, more banks, and bigger enterprises--Marcus
Garvey (Martin, 1976)
Garvey thought they needed to innovate and create a new
ideology that fit their needs. He was not only talking
about capitalism, but the creation of an economic state
where they could maximize their economic interests. In
short, he was talking about economic development.
Garvey likened the underdeveloped African American
communities to underdeveloped countries. Both are often
exploited with unfavorable terms of trade and high
unemployment. After studying work by Dr. Robert Love,
a spokesman who organized blacks in Jamaica, Garvey
realized that tax dollars paid by African Americans often
ended up supporting economic interests outside their
communities (Lewis, 1992). Consequently, he sought to
use the tax dollars to make purchases from and support
African American entrepreneurs. Monies spent by their
schools, hospitals and urban services should go to
African American entrepreneurs creating a guaranteed
market where there would always be a demand for their
goods and services. By directing tax revenue back to the
economy, Garvey believed this would foster economic
development without requiring large sums of private
investment. Therefore, a maximum return for tax dollars
would be received by the communities (Haddad and
Pugh, 1969).
Garvey's Promotion of African American
Entrepreneurship
After coming to America, Garvey was able to use his
extraordinary personality to persuade African Americans
to invest. These capitalistic economic investments were
made possible because of Garvey's poetic words of
nationalism and back-to-Africa dreams. Indeed, Garvey
was able to raise large sums of money to invest in risky
capitalistic ventures. It was through capitalism that
Garvey wanted to achieve economic self-sufficiency for
African Americans. He believed that protection against
discrimination came through financial independence.
Once a strong economic base was constructed, they
could seek other political and social objectives. He
believed that these material achievements by way of
entrepreneurial effort would enable African Americans
to be equally recognized. It should be noted that this
philosophy can be extracted from African attorney
Casely Hayford's Gold Coast Leader (Stein, 1986).
Garvey believed that commerce and industry were the
props of the economic life of the state, community and
society as a whole. Progressive nations indulged in
commerce and industry, and these activities provided
occupations for the residents of the state. You were
either an employer, an employee, or a ward of the state,
and a man without his own business or specialized
training was always at a disadvantage in making a
living. Great wealth is made out of commerce and
industry. In Garvey's opinion, African Americans who
attempted to go into business, commercial or industrial,
were at a disadvantage because they could not
appreciate starting at a point and climbing up the ladder.
While other races started at the bottom and climbed their
way up, African Americans always desired to start at the
top, thus resulting in failure. Garvey said, "No success
ever came from the top, it is always from the bottom up.
He will never be an industrial or commercial factor until
he has learned the principles of commercial and
industrial success.
Without commerce and industry, a people perish
economically. The Negro is perishing because he has
no economic system-- Marcus Garvey (Martin, 1986)
In 1912, Garvey went to London and studied with Duse
Mohammad Ali. Ali, a historian and author, brought to
light the plight of African descendants all over the
world. His influence shaped Garvey's speeches, and led
him to organize the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914 (Vincent, 1971).
It has been suggested that the UNIA motto, "One God,
One Aim, One Destiny" originated from Duse Ali's
Islamic influences on Garvey (Rashid, 2002). Their
business entrepreneurial approach to economic selfsufficiency
mirrored Booker T. Washington's endeavors
in the United States.
Garvey sought to meet with Washington to discover
how to improve Jamaica's educational system. After
arriving in the United States, his purpose changed as he
organized a UNIA branch in New York. He wanted to
create African American owned business firms that
Continued on page 30
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Continued from page 29 – The Economics of Marcus Garvey
would provide them with adequate income. Between
1918 and the early 1920s, Garvey efforts established a
number of UNIA businesses.
Garvey aspired to develop an international shipping line
that would carry passengers and freight between
America, Africa and the West Indies. By drawing on the
speculative get-rich-quick mentality of African
Americans, he was able to persuade investors to purchase
stock in a new shipping corporation. Consequently, the
Black Star Line (BSL) steamship corporation was
incorporated in 1919. The project was capitalized
exclusively by African Americans. Individual purchases
were limited to 200 shares priced at five dollars each. In
the company's first year, capital stock investments
reached approximately $750,000 ($7.825 million in 2002
dollars).
The African American ownership gave Garvey's
supporters a sense of pride and hope for prosperous
returns. Eventually, the BSL purchased three ships.
Unfortunately, the company was unable to negotiate a
fair market price for the ships as dealers took advantage,
charging inflated prices for severely depreciated capital.
These overpriced purchases depleted BSL's funds and
contributed to their eventual bankruptcy. By 1922, the
ships were lost and the corporation collapsed. The BSL
had lost more than $600,000, and accounts payable
exceeded $200,000. There were never any dividends
paid, and the value of BSL's investment assets had
depreciated completely. Nevertheless, the BSL was the
first large-scale business venture financed and managed
by African Americans. It still remains one of the largest
African American owned companies in U.S. history. It
should be emphasized that the underpinnings for the
BSL's financial losses reflected market troubles plaguing
the entire industry. The shipping industry was in a
recession magnified by the excess capacity of transport
ships after World War I. Many shipping firms were
unable to recover their variable costs, and consequently,
shut down business operations.
To accomplish the goal of enhancing entrepreneurship, in
1919 the UNIA established the Negroes Factories
Corporation (NFC) incorporated in Delaware as 200,000
shares were offered at $5 per share (Lewis, 1992). Its
objective was to promote African American
entrepreneurship in large industrial centers by providing
investment capital and technical expertise. The
corporation assisted in the development of grocery stores,
restaurants, a steam laundry, a millinery store, a tailor, a
dressmaking shop, and a publishing business. Garvey
encouraged and established through the NFC a factory
that mass produced the first African American dolls. In
Garvey's plan, each individual business would be
cooperatively owned by UNIA members, and eventually
linked into a worldwide system of economic cooperation
that simulated a socialistic planned economy (Lewis
1992). This trading community would be sufficiently
large so that the economies of scale generated would
enable it to thrive even in the face of hostility from the
rest of the world. Garvey summed up this idea: "Negro
producers, Negro distributors, Negro consumers! The
world of Negroes can be self contained. We desire
earnestly to deal with the rest of the world, but if the rest
of the world desire not, we seek not" (Martin, 1976).
Although these business investments were, for the most
part, not successful, they became a solid economic
foundation for future African American business
ventures.
Economic self-reliance was foremost on Garvey's list
because he foresaw a depression which he thought would
severely harm African Americans (Lewis and Bryan,
1991). Consequently, Garvey's attempts to establish
economic self-reliance went beyond cooperate business
enterprises. The UNIA also acted as a community service
agency by paying death and other minor benefits to
members. Local divisions were required to maintain a
charitable fund for the purpose of assisting distressed
members or needy individuals of the race. A fund for
"loans of honor" to active members, and an employment
bureau to aid members seeking employment, also
established (Martin, 1976).
Garvey on Capitalism
Garvey's thoughts on economic development led him to
consider his views of capitalism and communism. He
considered capitalism to be necessary in the process of
human advancement but expressed difficulty with the
results of its unrestrained uses. He remarked, "It seems
strange and a paradox, but the only convenient friend the
Negro worker or laborer has in America at the present
time, is the white capitalist. The capitalist being selfish is
seeking only the largest profit out of labor--is willing and
glad to use Negro labor wherever possible on a scale
`reasonably' below the standard white union wage"
(Jacques-Garvey, 1969). It was Garvey's belief that white
capitalists tolerated African American workers only
because they were willing to accept a lower standard of
wage than unionized white workers. If, however, African
American workers organized and unionized demanding
comparable wages as the white union men, the preference
of employment would go to the white worker.
Garvey aimed to reform the social democratic nature
rather than attempting to eradicate the capitalist system.
Continued on page 31
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Continued from page 33 – The Economics of Marcus Garvey
He felt that the capitalistic system gave African
Americans a chance for competitive employment and
also gave them the opportunity to make a profit from
their labor. Henderson and Ledebur (1970) noted that
Garvey favored strict limitations on the amount of
income or investable funds controlled by individuals and
corporations. Sums accumulated above these figures
should be appropriated by the state. The state should also
expropriate, without compensation, the assets of
capitalists and corporations who started wars and strife in
order to further their own financial interests. He
attempted to implement these ideas by organizing his
business ventures along cooperative lines and by placing
a ceiling on the number of shares any one person could
own. In his mind, these actions were attempts by poor
people to establish "a capitalistic system of their own to
combat the heartless capitalistic system of the masterly
ruling class" (Martin, 1976).
Garvey on Communism
Garvey felt that communism was a white man's creation
to solve their own political and economic problems. He
believed that the communist party wanted to use the
African American vote "to smash and overthrow" the
capitalistic white majority to "put their majority group or
race still in power, not only as communists but as white
men" (Jacques-Garvey, 1969). To him, it suggested the
enthronement of the white working class over the
capitalistic class of the race. It was never intended for the
economic or political emancipation of African
Americans, but rather to raise the earning capacity of the
lower class workers. Garvey said, "It is a dangerous
theory of economic and political reformation because it
seeks to put government in the hands of an ignorant white
mass who have not been able to destroy their natural
prejudices towards Negroes and other non-white people.
While it may be a good thing for them, it will be a bad
thing for the Negroes who will fall under the government
of the most ignorant, prejudiced class of the white race"
(Nolan, 1951).
The communists hoped to capture the UNIA movement
spawned by Garvey's magnetic appeal over the African
American masses. The act of the communist party
inviting them to join their ranks was to support the theory
that they were communists too. Hence a white employer
would be faced with the choice of hiring either a white
communist or an African American communist and the
appeal of race would give the white communist an
advantage. Garvey's plan involved letting the communists
fight their own battles. African Americans needed to take
advantage of the opportunities that were presented during
the fight, without joining in the fight. The danger of
communism to Garvey is that they sought the minority
vote to overthrow and become a dominant power. He
believed that the communists were still white men who
would still seek to take advantage of African Americans.
Consequently, Garvey advised against supporting the
communist party, or he would be guilty of transferring
government from the intelligent to the ignorant (Martin,
1986).
Conclusion
In the perspective of history, Marcus Garvey was a
phenomenal success. Through the accumulation of risk
capital, Garvey sought to fight capitalistic inequality
through capitalistic methods of economic organization.
This gave African-Americans a sense of unity, and
provided hope for a better way of living. However,
Garvey's economic philosophy for business success was
doomed to fail in the United States. His ideas were
handicapped by numerous theoretical and conceptual
flaws. Specifically, Garvey's economic ideas did not meet
the demands of twentieth-century development. Indeed, it
was Garvey's own personal economic ineptitude and his
unwillingness to evolve his pro-capitalistic activities that
led to his business failures. He failed to discover that
there were economic theories applicable to the African
American movement other than the accumulation of risk
capital.
Garvey's Nationalism lacked the racial equality and
economic thought to address problems of poverty and
political rights needed for African American economic
success. While he did not openly endorse any major
economic system, his philosophy for limited individual
and corporate ownership helped label him a "welfarestate
liberal" (Vincent, 1971). It remains, however, that
the Black Star Line was a landmark in African American
history providing a blueprint in which to build
entrepreneurial business ventures. Indeed, Marcus
Garvey's plan for African American capitalism was an
enormous development. Garvey's ill-fated business
enterprises became the procedural and conceptual model
for future achievements in African American economic
development.
References
Allen, R. (1969). Black Awakening in Capitalistic America.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
DuBois, W.E.B. (1940). Dusk of Dawn. New York, NY:
Harcourt Brace.
Garvey, M. (1924). "UNIA report." Negro World, January.
Haddad, W., and Pugh, D. (1969). Black Economic
Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Henderson, W., and Ledebur, L. (1970). Economic Disparity:
Continued on page 32
-31- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 31 - The Economics of Marcus
Garvey
Problems and Strategies for Black America. New York, NY:
The Free Press.
Jacques-Garvey, A. (Ed.). (1969). The Philosophy and
Opinions of Marcus Garvey. New York, NY: Atheneum.
Lewis, R. (1992). Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion.
Trenton, NJ: African World Press.
Lewis, R., and Bryan, P. (Eds.). (1991). Garvey: His Work
and Impact. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Martin, T. (1986). Message of The People: The Course in
African Philosophy. Dover, MA: The Majority Press.
Martin, T. (1976). Race First: The Ideological and
Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and The
Universal Negro Improvement Association. Dover, MA: The
Majority Press.
Nolan, W. (1951). Communism versus the Negro. Chicago,
IL: Henry Regnery Company.
Rashad, A. (2002). "Some early Pan-African nationalists."
RaceandHistory.com.
Rogoff, E., and Trinkaus, J. (1998). "Perhaps the times have
not yet caught up to Marcus Garvey, an early champion of
ethnic entrepreneurship." Journal of Small Business
Management, 36 (4), 66-71.
Sertima, I. (1988). "Great Black leaders: Ancient and
modern." Journal of African Civilizations, 17 (4), 372-383.
Stein, J. (1986). The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and
Class in Modern Society. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State
University Press.
Vincent, T. (1971). Black Power and the Garvey Movement.
Berkeley, CA: Ramparts Press.
http://africanholocaust.net/news_ah/garvey.html
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Roots of the Rastafari
Movement
In the year 1887 on the 17th day of August, a bouncing
baby boy was born from the belly of Sarah Jane
Richards, at 32 Market Street in St. Ann‘s Bay, Jamaica
West Indies. This child turned out to be, the great
Honorable Marcus Garvey, African Liberator and
African Patriot, who became the founder and Director,
of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,
which became an international organization, for the
consciousness of African people everywhere, and was
very active and well known, in the United States of
America.
Marcus Garvey traveled some parts of the world, teach-
ing Africa for the Africans those at home and those
abroad, and ended up doing most of his great works in the
United States of America, while Ras Tafari Makonnen,
worked hard and seriously, to uplift his people in
Ethiopia, and to change the degrading living conditions,
which existed at that time. So although Marcus Garvey
and Ras Tafari Makonnen, were living in different
countries, and have never met, they were both working
for the improvement of African people at the same period
of time.
In the year 1930, Marcus Garvey was 43 years of age,
and Ras Tafari Makonnen, was 38, and was about to sit
on the great Throne of King David, as Supreme Leader of
all of Ethiopia, Marcus Garvey was very much aware of
this situation, and therefore informed his followers, that
this King will be crowned in Ethiopia, and we as African
people, must look forward to him as our leader and
African Patriot.
After the Italians invaded Ethiopia, and murdered
thousands of Ethiopians, with their poison gas and other
weapons of mass distruction, in the year 1935-37, His
Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellassie I, went to
Geneva, and Challenge the League of Nations, for their
dishonesty and hypocrisy. He told them that they struck a
match in Ethiopia, but it shall blaze in Europe, and by
1939, Europe was blazing in the event of the second
world war, and it is still blazing, even now, as we are
approaching the third world war. He told them that God
and history will record their Judgement.
As a result of the above manifestations, the Roots of the
Rastafari Movement, was planted and watered, and has
grown into what it has become today. Marcus Garvey as
an African who was born in the Caribbean, has made
great contributions, to the cause of social Justice, for
African people in the USA, as well as all over the world,
and the Rastafari people have taken the baton from
Marcus Garvey, and carried on the great struggle, for
Repatriation, Reparation, Restoration, and Compensation,
for African people everywhere.
Marcus Garvey’s liberation works in the USA, is well
known, since he had African people in Uniforms,
marching for more than a mile long, in the Streets of
Harlem, New York, and other parts of the USA, shouting,
Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad,
as well as having great conventions, as early as 1920. He
was also able to put the black Star Line ships on the Sea,
although he was sabotaged and imprisoned, and finally
deported. So Marcus Garvey is to be credited, for starting
the Rastafari Movement, and so the Rastafari people,
continued the Noble struggle, for the liberation of African
Continued on page 33
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Continued from page 32 – Roots of the Rastafari Movement
people everywhere, with many oceans of self
determination.
We all have to agree, that as a result of Marcus Garvey,
and the Rastafari Movement, which both started in the
Caribbean, people like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and
many other liberation Musicians and poets, were
created, and they are still singing their redemption
songs. They have used their creative works, to make
great contributions, to the cause of social Justice in the
USA, and other parts of the world, in which we are all
living today.
Marcus Garvey and the Rastafari Movement also had,
and still have, great influence in Mama Africa, among
African leaders like Kwame Nkuhmah, Julius Nyerere,
Seke Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Patrice Lumumba, Steve
Biko and many others, as it relates to the independence
of African countries, during the sixties and even today.
So now I must inform you, that the struggle for the total
Liberation for Mama Africa, and her people
everywhere, still continues. Africa for Africans those at
home and those abroad.
Again I send many oceans of blessings and self
determination to African people everywhere
ONE BLACK HEART ONE BLACK LOVE
Baba Ras Marcus
http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgibin/forum/archive1/config.pl?read=74946
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Continued from page 3 – Ubuntu Philosophy as
an African Philosophy for Peace
people would necessarily a thing to be avoided, but at
the same time the Ubuntu notion of life brings a
particular connotation to African way of life. In spite of
temporary misery, the African people would keep a
positive sense of life while trying to overcome the
situation. This leads us to try to look at the underlying
dimension of Ubuntu having a religious aspect.
2. UBUNTU WITH RELIGIOUS DIMENSIONS
For many Africans, while they may belong to different
societies and have different traditions and rituals,
Ubuntu usually has a strong religious meaning. In
general, the African belief is that your ancestors
continue to exist amongst the living in the form of
spirits and they are your link to the Divine Spirit. If one
is in distress or need, he or she approach the ancestors'
spirits and they are the ones who will intercede on his
or her behalf with God.
That is why it is important to not only venerate the
ancestors, but to, eventually, oneself become an ancestor
worthy of veneration. For this, the person agrees to
respect the community's rules; they undergo initiation to
establish formal ties with both the current community
members and those that have passed on, and they ensure
harmony by adhering to the Ubuntu principles in the
course of life.
The South African Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond
Tutu describes Ubuntu as:
“It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact
that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound
up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks
about wholeness, it speaks about compassion.”A person
with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and
generous, willing to share. Such people are open and
available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of
others, do not feel threatened that others are able and
good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes
from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They
know that they are diminished when others are
humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed,
diminished when others are treated as if they were less
than who they are. The quality of Ubuntu gives people
resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still
human despite all efforts to dehumanize them."
Nelson Mandela, the first president of post-apartheid
South Africa, narrates his profound conviction rooted in
Ubuntu approach:
“I have always known that deep down in every human
heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born
hating another person because of the color of his skin, or
his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate,
and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love,
for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the
opposite. Even at the grimmest times in prison, when my
comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a
glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just
for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep
me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden
but never extinguished” (Mandela, 1994: 542).
This narration from Mandela is profoundly rooted in the
Ubuntu perception of life. The fact that he could still
keep find human’s goodness in spite of all the grievances,
it enlightens how capable human beings can cultivate a
culture of peace that goes beyond vengeance and hatred.
He still goes on giving further understanding of how
being human is the key meaning of life for any human
being:
-33- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger
for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for
Continued on page 37

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Marcus Garvey’s Liberian Dream Deferred
By Althea Romeo-Mark
Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the most influential
black leaders of the twentieth century, used his printing
and oratory skills and charismatic personality to
organize a Pan-African movement with the intention of
returning disillusioned Black-Americans and recent
immigrant West Indians to Liberia in the 1920s.
The Jamaican born promoter of the “Back To Africa
Movement,” was born on August 17th, 1887 in St.
Ann’s Bay, Saint Ann’s Parish, and died in London,
England, on June 1940. He was one of eleven siblings
born to Marcus Mosiah Garvey and Sarah Jane
Richards.
He had a background in printing and published his first
newspaper, The Watchman, in 1909. He later went on to
edit the newspaper, `La Nacionalè in 1911, Colon,
Panama, before returning to Jamaica in 1912. But he
soon left for London in 1912 where he worked for the
African Times and Orient Review.
According to Charlotte Phillips Fein, Marcus Garvey’s
“Lifelong interest in Negro and African history was
sparked by his acquaintance with African students,
particularly Duse Mohammed Ali (publisher of the
African Times and Orient Review), a half-Negro
Egyptian nationalist . . . Garvey was inspired upon
learning of Booker T. Washington’s plan for uplifting
the Negro race, conceived of himself as a divinely
appointed leader of the black masses. Returning to
Jamaica in 1914, he sponsored the formation of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association.” [1]
In his article “William E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey,
and Pan-Africa”, Ben F. Rogers, states that Garveys’
attempt in 1914 to set up a Universal Negro
Improvement Association in Jamaica had been abortive.
“New York City, however, seemed to have possibilities
far beyond those of the West Indies and so in 1917
Garvey reorganized the U.N.I.A. and in the following
year began publishing the Negro World, a weekly paper
disseminating his Pan-African ideas. Negroes
immediately began to flock to his banner, and there
is little question that Marcus Garvey was the most
popular Negro leader in the United States during the
early 1920s . . . .In part, of course his dynamic
personality, his great oratorical powers, and his
shrewd understanding of psychology.” [2]
Marcus Garvey’s background in printing was a
blessing because his publications became vehicles
for spreading the vision of an African Homeland to
many West Indian and Afro-Americans who
dreamed of a less oppressive life. John L Graves in
his paper, “The Social Ideas of Marcus Garvey”,
mentions that “A large portion of the immigrants to
America after World War 1 were Negro immigrants
of English, French and Spanish tongues . . . Of these
. . . some 10,630 or 86.6 percent of the total were
Negroes from the West Indies. . . The West Indians
were full of hope, as were most immigrant groups.
They were usually very ambitious and intended to
act upon the American ideal of equal opportunity for
all.” [3] These hopes were soon dashed with the rise
of the Ku Klux Klan and empty promises made by
the American government. Black American soldiers
and their families were hoping to reap the rewards of
having fought to defend America in World War I.
“American Negro disillusionment equalled that of
the West Indian Negro and both existed in a plight of
utter hopelessness of ever having full rights to
freedom, let alone happiness, in America . . . Garvey
relied on his stirring heroic propaganda and an
emotional need among his people that amounted to a
Messianic expectancy. This commenced one of the
foremost Negro mass-movements in history.” [4]
Garvey through his speeches and newspaper was
able to propagate black pride, black self-sufficiency
and enterprise. His propaganda was so compelling
Continued on page 35
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Continued from page 34 – Marcus Garvey’s Liberian Dream
Deferred
that many people felt, “the only salvation then for
American Negroes was to join Garvey’s organization and
prepare to return to Africa where they could establish a
government of their own strong enough to protect colored
people everywhere. The machinery needed to create this
so-called African Republic was set up in Harlem in 1921.
Garvey became the Provisional President of Africa and
surrounded himself with a newly created African
nobility. There was also an African Legion, Garvey’s
private army, resplendent in dark blue uniforms with red
stripes. There were Black Star Nurses and bands and
choirs. All the paraphernalia of the New Africa was ready
for action whenever the master spoke.” [5]
In the spirit of black enterprise and in the fulfilment of
the dream of returning to Africa, where they could take
pride in their race, fund-raising began. “Claiming a
following of two million by 1919, Garvey founded the
Black Star Steamship and the Negro Factories
Corporation, both designed to simulate Negro-owned
commerce and trade,” [6] Funding was raised through
members who “had to pay an annual fee of $1 to the
central office, and Garvey reminded his readers that . . .
in order ‘to be financial, you MUST pay this assessment.
. . ’ He sold tickets to most of his speeches, pictures of
himself for 50c a dozen. The greatest of all his fundraising
drives, however, was the promotion of the Black
Star Line, a steam company whose boats would be owned
and manned by Negroes and would eventually be the
means of transporting American negroes to Africa at the
time of the great migration.” [7]
Garvey then set his sight on Liberia, with plans to build
colleges, industrial plants and railroads. His ambition,
however, was so large scale and threatening to Liberian
sovereignty that the Liberian government as well some
European powers thwarted his efforts.
According to Tony Martin in his “The International
Aspect of The Garvey Movement”, “Had Garvey
succeeded in his attempt to transfer headquarters from
Harlem to Liberia, his followers would, at one swoop,
have exceeded the total Liberian electorate. For it was
Garvey’s intention to take with him several thousand
Afro-American and West Indian families, far more than
the less than 5,000 persons allowed to vote in Liberia at
that time.” [8]
Ultimately, as Ben F. Rogers suggests, “. . . the Liberian
government was so worried for fear the U.N.I.A. would
take over their country that they warned all of their
American consuls to deny visas to any of Garvey’s
followers. Two ex-presidents of the country were mem-
bers of the Association, and the mayor of Monrovia
held the title of High Potentate of Africa in Garvey’s
Provisional Government. This initial attempt at
migration failed not so much because of American
Negro’s apathy as because of the Liberian
government’s opposition which Garvey called
‘treachery of the lowest order.” [9]
The dreams of the “Back to Africa Movement” did not
end there, despite the Liberian government’s
opposition to their plan, and Marcus Garvey’s
conviction and imprisonment for mail fraud relating to
his UNIA steamship company in 1925. In the late
1930’s, followers of the “Back to Africa Movement”,
which included Garvey’s UNIA and other off-shoots of
his organization, aligned themselves with an American
Senator and white supremacist. Senator Theodore G.
Bilbo, “who is remembered as the nation’s vilest
purveyor of white-supremacy ” [10] , and who is noted
for stating, “ if they keep this lynching bill before the
Senate much longer, I am going to succeed in getting
the negroes deported to Africa,” [11] became the
champion of their cause. The senator had also
recommended the “deportation or repatriation” of the
African American population to Liberia. [12] Strange
bed-fellows indeed, but Senator Theodore G. Bilbo
promised to propose a bill and get financial assistance
from the government if the “Back to Africa
Movement” supported him. Michael W. Fitzgerald in
his article, “We Have Found a Moses”, states that “In
May 1938 Bilbo presented an amendment to House
Joint Resolution 679, a work relief bill. The
amendment would have repatriated African American
volunteers under age forty to Liberia and provided
them short-term support. Because Liberia was too
small to absorb the whole African American
population, Bilbo proposed that England and France
cede to it their West African colonies and that in return
the U.S. forgive their World War debts.” [13]
Michael W. Fitzgerald further states that “In
September, Garvey ordered the UNIA to circulate
petitions in favour of the bill, directing that the
signatures be sent to Senator Bilbo.” [14] Mitte Gordon,
another “Back to Africa” advocate, and former
member of UNIA, “received two thousand dollars
from . . . The American Colonization Society. The
money funded a delegation to Liberia, and two
emissaries met with President Edwin Barclay in
December. Barclay avoided a firm commitment to
welcoming immigrants, but his letter to Mrs. Gordon
did solicit ‘selected immigration’ from the United
States.” [15] Continued on page 36
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Continued from page 35 – Marcus Garvey’s Liberian
Dream Deferred
The bill, finally named “The Greater Liberian bill
expanded Bilbo’s previous proposals. It authorized
negotiations with European powers for the cession of
West African lands, in addition to whatever lands
Liberia might provide. The American military would
govern the cession for up to two years, setting up a civil
administration that could then govern for up to four
more years. The territory would then gain 'complete
autonomy' as a commonwealth of the U.S, but the bill
maintained for U.S. officials the option of either
seeking inclusion for the commonwealth in the state of
Liberia or granting it full independence." [16]
The Greater Liberian bill also stipulated that
“Americans between twenty-one and fifty could seek
removal, but only those eligible for Liberian
citizenship, that is, those of African decent. Settlers
would receive land grants of fifty acres and grants-inaid
until their farms or businesses were self-sustaining.
The bill set a one billion dollar initial maximum for
federal expenditures. More could be appropriated, and
Bilbo eventually envisioned a commitment of fifteen to
twenty billion dollars over the next forty years.” [17]
The threat of an outbreak of a second world war
(WW11) soon diverted the attention of politicians from
the proposed bill. According to Michael Fitzgerald, “
The UNIA leaders had always been calculating in their
approach to repatriation, so they took the defeat of the
Liberia bill with relative stoicism. James R. Steward,
Marcus Garvey’s successor as the head of UNIA,
actually admitted the international situation foreclosed
the venture. Moreover, Garvey’s death in June 1940
removed a spokesman for the measure and diverted the
organization to internal power struggle.” [18]
In the end, Marcus Garvey never did set foot on
Liberian soil himself, but his wife Amy did, in 1946.
She also travelled to Sierra Leone where she visited the
grave of Dr. Wilmot Blyden and met his family. Some
of Marcus Garvey’s followers took on the endeavour
themselves and travelled to Liberia, where they settled
and contributed in their individual ways to the
development of the country.
Marcus Garvey has since influenced many movements,
including the Nation of Islam; the “Black Power
Movement” of the late 1960s and early 1970s that
propagated black pride and the acknowledgement Black
Americans’ African ancestry; and the Rastafarian
Movement that evolved in Jamaica and produced
Reggae music. He has also inspired political leaders in
Africa and the Caribbean in their struggle for independ-
ence against colonialism and apartheid. Marcus Garvey
did not live to see his dreams fulfilled but his influence,
however, is still dynamic.
Footnotes
[1] Charlotte Phillips Fein, “Section C: Marcus Garvey: His
Opinion About Africa,” The Journal of Negro Education,
Vol.33, No.4, (Autumn, 1964), pp. 446-449.
[2] Ben F. Rogers, “William E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, and
Pan-Africa,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 40, No.2.
(April, 1955) pp. 154-165.
[3] John L Graves, “The Social Ideas of Marcus Garvey,”
Current Trends in Negro Education and Shorter Papers, The
Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 31, No.1. (Winter, 1962), p.
65-74.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ben F. Rogers.
[6] Charlotte Phillips Fein.
[7] Ben F. Rogers.
[8] Tony Martin, “The International Aspect of The Garvey
Movement,” Afro-American Red Star, Washington D.C.:
February 20, 1993. Vol. 101, Iss 26, p. A6.
[9] Ben F. Rogers
[10] Michael W. Fitzgerald, “We Have Found a Moses:
Theodore Bilbo, Black Nationalism, and the Greater Liberia
Bill of 1939”, The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 63, No. 2.
(May, 1997), pp. 293-320.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
Bibliography
Charlotte Phillips Fein, “Section C: Marcus Garvey: His
Opinions About Africa,” The Journal of Negro Education,
Vol.33, No.4. (Autumn, 1964), pp, 446-449.
Continued on page 37
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Continued from page 36- Marcus Garvey’s Liberian
Dream Deferred
Michael W. Fitzgerald , “We Have Found a Moses:”
Theodore Bilbo, Black Nationalism, And the GreaterLiberia
Bill of 1939, The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 63, No. 2
(May, 1997), pp. 293-230.
John L Graves, “The Social Ideas of Marcus Garvey,”
Current Trends in Negro Education and Shorter Papers,
The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 31, No.1. (Winter,
1962), pp. 65-74.
Tony Martin, “The International aspect of The Garvey
Movement,” Afro- American Red Star, Washington D.C.:
February 20, 1993. Vol. 101, Iss 26,p. A6
Ben F. Rogers, “William E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, and
Pan-Africa,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 40,
No.2. (April, 1955) pp. 154- 165.
http://archives-two.liberiaseabreeze.com/althea-romeomark3.html
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Hail! United States of Africa
By Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Hail! United States of Africa-free!
Hail! Motherland most bright, divinely fair!
State in perfect sisterhood united,
Born of truth; mighty thou shalt ever be.
Hail! Sweet land of our father's noble kin!
Let joy within thy bounds be ever known;
Friend of the wandering poor, and helpless,
thou,
Light to all, such as freedom's reigns within.
From Liberia's peaceful western coast
To the foaming Cape at the southern end,
There's but one law and sentiment sublime,
One flag, and its emblem of which we boast.
The Nigeria's are all united now,
Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, too.
Gambia, Senegal, not divided,
But in one union happily bow.
The treason of the centuries is dead,
All alien whites are forever gone;
The glad home of Sheba is once more free,
As o'er the world the black n-tan raised his head.
Bechuanaland, a State with Kenya,
Members of the Federal Union grand,
Send their greetings to sister Zanzibar,
And so does laughing Tanganyika.
Over in Grand Mother Mozambique,
The pretty Union Flag floats in the air,
She is sister to good Somaliland,
Smiling with the children of Dahomey.
Three lusty cheers for old Basutoland,
Timbuctoo, Tunis and Algeria,
Uganda, Kamerun, all together
Are in the Union with Nyasaland.
We waited long for fiery Morocco,
Now with Guinea and Togo she has come,
All free and equal in the sisterhood,
Like Swazi, Zululand and the Congo.
There is no state left out of the Union-
The East, West, North, South, including Central,
Are in the nation, strong forever,
Over blacks in glorious dominion.
Hail! United States of Africa-free!
Country of the brave black man's liberty;
State of greater nationhood thou hast won,
A new life for the race is just begun.
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Continued from page 33 – Ubuntu Philosophy as
an African Philosophy for Peace
the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well
as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated
just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away
another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred; he is
locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrowmindedness.
I am not truly free if I am taking away
someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not truly
free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed
and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity […]
When I walked out of prison, that was my mission to
liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both […] For to
be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live
in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others
(Mandela, 1994: 544).
Being robbed one’s humanity may be observed from the
oppressor and the oppressed. But most of the times we
Continued on page 38
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Continued from page 37 – Ubuntu Philosophy as an
African Philosophy for Peace
tend to think that it is the oppressed that is the only
loser. It is relevant to understand the rhetoric of
Mandela when it comes to grasp the lost of humanness
in the oppressor. This understanding underpins the
religious dimension in Ubuntu perception about
relationship among human beings.
As I have discussed about Mandela, it is relevant to
see the political aspect of Ubuntu in the context of
South Africa and the African understanding in general.
3. UBUNTU WITH POLITICAL DIMENSION
Since the downfall of Apartheid in South Africa,
Ubuntu is often mentioned in the political context to
bring about a stronger sense of unity. For example, the
passage of the White Paper for Social Welfare through
the National Assembly signals the start of a new era in
welfare delivery in South Africa. For the first time in
South African history delivery in the welfare field is
driven by key principles such as democracy,
partnership, Ubuntu, equity, and inter- sectorial
collaboration. The principle of caring for each other’s
well-being is being promoted, and a spirit of mutual
support fostered. Each individual’s humanity is ideally
expressed through his or her relationship with others
and theirs in turn through recognition of the
individual’s humanity.
In this way, Ubuntu means that people are people
through other people. It also acknowledges both the
rights and the responsibilities of every citizen in
promoting individual and societal well-being though it
is not perfect per se.
Ubuntu that stresses allowing every individual to have
their equal say in any discussion and in ultimately
reaching an agreement acceptable to all may lead to
conformist behavior in order to achieve solidarity. It
seems a trifle ironic that Group Politics and the Herd
Mentality – the human qualities common to us all, in
fact - could derail the quest for the common goal. But
Ubuntu remains relevant for the whole world
especially as it has served to reconcile the Black and
White after a long period of full racial segregation.
Barbara sees a way foreword that the world would
embrace some of the African values:
African values could contribute much to world
consciousness, but people in the West misunderstand
Africa for many reasons.
• First, Africa’s traditional culture is inaccessible
because most of it is oral rather than written and lived
rather than formally communicated in books or
journals; it is difficult to learn about from a distance.
• Second, many African political leaders betrayed the
philosophical and humanitarian principles on which
African culture is based, and political failures in African
countries tend to tarnish the views of many Westerners.
• Third, people in the West, for whatever reason, receive
negative, limited information through the media; images of
ethnic wars, dictatorships, famine, and AIDS predominate,
so the potential contribution of African values is often lost
(Nussbaum, 2003: 21).
What Barbara Nussbaum stipulates reflects what is going
on in the worldview of most of non-Africans. By non-
Africans I want to avoid reducing the issue to only the
Westerners. This perception hinders the possibility to
discover deep values from Africa. Things are
interconnected from the Western way of looking at Africa
to the local elites and leaders’ distortion of those important
and underlying African values. One of African values may
be found in the Ubuntu aspect connected to social life as a
philosophy.
4. UBUNTU WITH PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION
The good points outweigh the shortcomings. Given the
vast racial, cultural, religious, educational, and socioeconomic
differences apparent not just in South-African
society but the world over currently, the concept of Ubuntu
is really rather relevant. It is easy to go into the 'us and
them' pattern. It is also easy to fall into the trap of judging
a different people by our standards or by sticking to certain
established stereotypical notions. If one instead regards
someone as a fellow human being, all individual quirks
and differences taken into account, there is perhaps a
greater chance of achieving understanding. This is when
socio-philosophical dimension of Ubuntu comes in. It
revolutionizes the concept of individuality that is based on
Cartesian thinking, as Dirk recognizes:
Ubuntu's respect for the particularity of the other links up
closely to its respect for individuality. But, be it noted the
individuality which Ubuntu respects, is not of Cartesian
making. On the contrary, Ubuntu directly contradicts the
Cartesian conception of individuality in terms of which the
individual or self can be conceived without thereby
necessarily conceiving the other. The Cartesian individual
exists prior to, or separately and independently from the
rest of the community or society. The rest of society is
nothing but an added extra to a pre-existent and selfsufficient
being. This "modernistic" and "atomistic"
conception of individuality lies at the bottom of both
individualism and collectivism. Individualism exaggerates
seemingly solitary aspects of human existence to the
detriment of communal aspects. Collectivism makes the
Continued on page 66
-38- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
THE GLOBAL CAPITALIST CRISIS AND
AFRICA’S FUTURE
By Prof. Dani Wadada Nabudere, RIP
Executive Director
The Marcus-Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute
Mbale, Uganda, 5 th September 2010.
Signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU)
between Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute (represented
by its Executive Director, Prof Nabudere, on the right) and
the National Minorities Business Council of USA
(represented by its Managing Director, Fritz-Earle
McLymont, on the left). In the middle is Institute's former
Director of Research, Dr Edonna Alexandria
Introduction
I am overjoyed to be asked to give this Inaugural
Address of the newly formed Nile Heritage Forum on
political economy to provide space and platform for
African automous thinking and policy dialogue on
issues of the future of the continent free from
disadvantageous foreign influences that have resulted
in Africa’s weakening. While this is a noble objective,
we must nevertheless avoid being overly reactive to
such influences and instead build our own capacity to
think and act independently regardless by developing
new ways of looking at ourselves and the world at
large. This can successfully be done if we draw
inspiration and living knowledge from our well-known
heritage as the home to the Cradle of Humanity.
Africa today is trailing the rest of the world because in part
the African leadership has failed to mobilize its people
along the lines of a Pan-African agenda that informed the
earlier phases of our political development. This is due to
its weak ideological base, which instead of drawing from
such a heritage is wedded to Western ways of knowing and
doing things which we have derived from their educational
institutions without questioning, including Christian and
Muslim religious influences. While these external
interventions have added to Africa’s modern culture in
what Nkrumah called a ‘triple heritage,’ it has also left a
negative impact on African intellectual capacity to think
independently unlike, say, the Asian intellectuals and
political leaders who have linkages to their religions and
cultures. This is due to the fact that Asia, unlike Africa, was
less destabilized by way of religious intrusions resulting in
its intellectual and political leadership remaining more
anchored to their religions, languages and cultures.
The result is that the African economic and political scene
continues to be open to the outside world for exploitation
and enrichment of big corporations and the mafia, which
act in consort to help themselves to African cheap and
more-or-less free natural and human resources. They do
this with the help of the African leadership, which has been
bought over by these forces to exploit their own continent
in a lop-sided ‘globalisation.’ Many of these leaders use
their political and economic powers not only to assist the
foreign corporations, but also to enrich themselves by
stealing from public coffers and from the ‘aid’ they receive
for so-called ‘economic development’ of their countries.
Recent statistics show that as much as $ 150 billion dollars
are filtered out of the continent annually by African leaders
who place this ill-gotten wealth into their personal bank
Continued on page 40
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Continued from page 39– The Global Capitalist Crisis and
Africa’s Future
accounts. This is not only complicity in the
impoverishment of their populations; it is outright
criminal activity which is connived in by Western
governments and corporations because it benefits their
economies. The failure of the African post-colonial states
is therefore in great measure a responsibility of these
leaders, which is a betrayal of the African people.
We cannot therefore blame foreigners alone for the
continents’ depraved condition. There is a level at which
we can blame these forces outside our continent, but there
is a level at which we must accept responsibility since
most of this leadership comes from the same institutions
that we, as ‘educated’ Africans come from. In fact many
of us who are not in the state institutions crave to have
positions in the state institutions so that we may also have
a share of the ‘national cake,’ which is sometimes
obtained by dividing the population and creating conflicts
among them by exploiting their ethnic and tribal
identities. African culture is used negatively in the form
of ‘political tribalism’ to gain political advantages and
not in their interests. Indeed, the political divisions on our
continent are directed in compounding ethnic differences,
which could otherwise be harnessed and managed
through equitable economic and social transformation.
Even the very idea of ‘nation-building’ that was the song
of the first generation of African leaders turned into
political divisions based on ‘tribal’ differences, which
were very much the creation of colonial ‘divide and rule’
ideologies of the imperialist powers but which we
continued to exploit. The African political elites bought
into this ideology to their advantage, a heritage that has
led to the current state of massacres, ethnic-cleaning and
even genocides. We cannot blame these calamities on
foreign forces alone. We as African political and
economic elites have played an active role as agents in
these calamities that have bedevilled our continent. We
always blame these problems on the ‘colonialists’ and
‘imperialists’ while at the same time playing the role of
executioners of our own people.
The calamities that bedevil the continent at the present
moment are a continuation of the policies of the past
which African leaders, under neo-colonialism, have
continued to pursue. Indeed, the current global economic
crisis is an aspect we cannot ignore as having its roots in
the weakening of the continent ever since political
independence was achieved in the 1960s. Even the little
‘nationalism,’ which was reflected in the ‘Lagos Plan of
Action’ and the ‘Abuja Treaty’, were abandoned in
favour of Structural Adjustment Program-SAPs that were
accepted by African leadership whole sale in the 1980s.
-40- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
This led to the abandonment of what had been
emerging as a ‘social’ and ‘national’ agenda [Davidson,
1992].
Indeed, it was these ‘adjustments’ that led to the
denationalizations, privatizations and liberalizations of
the African economies that opened these economies to
new financial sharks in an ogre of ‘financialization,’ in
which the African leadership begun to participate by
heightened corruption, which drained the continent not
only of the financial resource but also of the brains in
what came to be called the ‘brain drain’ and mystified
as the ‘brain gains.’ The current crisis on the continent
must therefore be faced squarely and their origins
recognised if indeed we have to move towards a new
way of understanding the impacts of our role in global
issues. I will give an example of how we can face this
task by my own experiences arising out of these
difficult times.
The Global Capitalist Crisis
Indeed, what is being called the ‘global economic
meltdown’ is in actual fact a crisis of capitalism on a
scale never imagined before. Analogies are made to the
1929 financial crisis, but these analogies are misplaced,
because that crisis can be said to have been an
‘industrial cycle’ phenomenon which had only financial
effects. The response then was Keynesian economics,
which resulted in what emerged as ‘full employment’
after the war. As we now know this neo- Keynesian
recipe resulted even in a more serious ‘stagflation’ that
could no longer be responded to by the Keynesian
‘priming of the pump’ strategies to overcome cyclical
crises. It required a ‘Chicago’ response of monetarism
led by Milton Friedman which championed the
financial revolution.’ It is this ‘revolution’ that came to
a halt in the 2008-2009 ‘meltdown.’
Indeed, when the crisis struck the US in September
2008, the immediate reaction was that this was purely a
US affair. I challenged this characterization in my three
articles which appeared in the Uganda Sunday Monitor
within two weeks of the crisis being acknowledged on
15 th September, 2008. I argued that what we were
witnessing was neither a ‘sub-prime’ mortgage crisis, a
‘credit crunch,’ nor was it a financial crisis. I pointed
out that the crisis went to the very roots of capitalism as
a system: I wrote:
“The present financial crisis afflicting the global
economy should not be seen from the narrow focus of
the credit crunch and its relationship to the subprime
mortgage crisis in the Western countries, especially the
US. The crisis goes to the very foundations of the
global capitalist system and it should be analyzed from
Continued on page 41

Continued from page 40 - The Global Capitalist Crisis and
Africa’s Future
that angle. What is at the core of the crisis is the overextension
of credit on a narrow material production base.
This is in a situation in which money has become
increasingly detached from its material base of a money
commodity that can measure its value such as gold. But
this is not just a monetary phenomenon. It has its roots in
the ‘real economy’ of which it is part.”
I was able to come to these conclusions because I had
done some studies on the issue of money and credit seen
from a Marxist epistemology from which I published two
books. The main work was: The Rise and Fall of Money
Capital, published in London and the second, which was
a simplified version of the main work was: The Crash of
International Finance Capital, published in Harare in
1989. The main book did not receive much circulation
due to the fact that at the time it came out in 1990, the
socialist world was in crisis and Marxism was not taken
seriously especially on issues of political economy given
the fact that the economies of the USSR and the
‘Socialist’ countries were in crisis. The second, smaller
book received wider circulation and was read widely so
that when the crisis struck in 2008, a South African
political economist, Professor Patrick Bond, who had
read both my books, gave a public lecture in
Johannesburg at the height of the meltdown and declared
that: “Professor Nabudere has been vindicated.” The
smaller book was picked up once more by Pambazuka
Press, London who asked to republish it in 2009 with a
new introduction and new chapter dealing with the 2008
‘meltdown.’
I am mentioning this book because of the fact that the
study enabled me to give an up to date analysis of the
global capitalist economy when none of the official
economists were able to analyze and advise our
governments correctly. Even the mainstream University
economists continued to pursue erroneous theories which
were no longer relevant to the situation. Locally in
Uganda, it was a small NGO called SEATIN, which
immediately wrote to me and asked to reprint the three
articles because of the favourable way in which the three
articles had been received by the public. In fact when the
first article appeared in the first week of October, 2008 I
received some ten email responses praising my analysis
coming from as far as Chicago in the US. I responded to
the SEATIN request by offering to expand the articles in
a monograph, which I did. The result was an expanded
the 130-page monograph which they published in
Kampala under the title: The Global Capitalist Crisis and
the Way Forward for Africa, which came out in May
2009.
The three articles that appeared in the Sunday Monitor
were reproduced in the Pambazuka on-line-newsletter as
a single article. This combined article in Pambazuka
attracted the attention of an organization called
BOTHENDS from Holland, which thought it
contributed to the emerging consensus calling for a
Green New Deal because of its emphasis on the need to
change course and emphasize food security in our
countries in Africa. In fact the last of the three articles
had put forward a proposed ‘Way Forward for Africa’
after the crisis. I was invited to Amsterdam by
BOTHENDS to take part in a panel discussion on the
issue of the Green New Deal in which the Dutch
minister of finance was invited to take part together with
an Indian professor. This was ON 28 TH -29 TH March,
2009. It appeared that the passage in the articles that
interested them most was the following:
“What we have said above must already alert us as to
what we have to do to get out of the mess. First, we have
to look at how we can survive the crisis. For the first
time, we have to wake to the reality that we need a food
security policy as a matter of urgency about which we
can no longer dilly-dally. That means we have to focus
on the home market firstly, the regional market secondly
and the global market lastly. With the production being
focused on the home market, we can create our own
currency in East Africa because in that case we shall
have no alternative but to create it! But we cannot
develop a food security policy based on food crops of
which people have very little knowledge, especially
since with the currency crisis; we shall not have any
dollars to buy foreign food products with in the short
run. The African elites will have to content themselves
with indigenous crops….”
The articles in Pambazuka also attracted the attention of
an organization in Prague, Check Republic, called
GLOPOLIS, which on hearing that I was coming to
Amsterdam also invited me to go to Prague the next day
(30 th March-1 st April, 2009) where a large number of
participants discussed the on-going economic crisis. The
theme of the conference was: The World in Crisis:
Economics and Policies for Global Transformation-
Alternative ECOFIN Conference. I participated in the
panel in first plenary on the topic: Redefining
Economics, where Wolfgang Sachs of Wuppertal
Institute, German and Martin Khor, Director of the
South Centre also spoke. I also spoke in Workshop 4 on
the issue of “Resource Sovereignty-How to revert
transfer of resources and improve control of the poor
over the key resources.”
At the time, many African leaders declared that the
Continued on page 42
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Continued from page 41 - The Global Capitalist Crisis and
Africa’s Future
crisis was unlikely to affect their countries since their
economies were not ‘fully’ integrated in the global
capitalist economy. In fact the indications by the end of
2008 was that with a threatening recession in the
industrial countries, the level of imports of raw materials
was going to decline; there was also indications that
‘aid’ would decline given the precarious financial
situation of the ‘donor’ countries; with reduced
employment in the developed world there was also
evidence that the level of the tourist industry would be
affected. Transfers from African workers employed in
the developed world were also likely to decline due to
growing unemployment. All these indicated that the
economies of the African countries would be adversely
affected in the medium term if not in the short term.
The declarations from both these conferences were sent
to the G 20 Summit, which was being held in London
from the 1 st April 2009. My participation in both these
meetings demonstrated that organizations in Europe took
seriously the analysis by African scholars if indeed they
were serious analyses. It also demonstrated that while
foreign organizations were quick to take note of African
contributions to the debate, none of our governments and
even local mainstream economists in government and
the Universities were able to take these debates about an
alternative future seriously.
Thus while my views through these organizations could
be sent to the G 20 Summit and to be taken into account,
none of the African countries, apart from South Africa,
was represented but with no declared positions. Without
attempting to blow my won trumpet, I would argue that
the lack of serious intellectual engagement on these
issues amongst the African leadership and academy was
evidence of our inability to think for ourselves and to put
forward positions that could protect the interests of our
countries, instead of having to accept dictates from the
‘Washington Consensus’ or the ‘donors.’ This is a postcolonial
heritage we must overcome.
The Global Crisis and the Future of Africa
This brings me to the whole question of the implications
of the on-going capitalist crisis and what it means for
Africa. I have already referred to my reactions to the
crisis in October 2008 and what I conceived to be the
response to the Way Forward for Africa. The concept
paper of the Nile Heritage points out that the objective of
the Forum is “to support African independent scholars,
civil society organizations and actors, artists and
environmentalists to initiate and participate effectively
and with credibility in policy dialogue so that the
authentic voices of the continent can have a better impact
-42- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
in the development of public policies.” It is also declared
that the “Forum’s vision is that policies and strategies
across the continent work to empower its peoples to
reclaim and protect its natural resources and heritage and
end impoverishment and marginalisation.” With reference
to the specific objects the Forum wants to deepen and
widen intellectual engagement, which can: “strengthen
African-centeredness” and to “Deepen engagement by
stimulating knowledge sharing, and evidence-based
policy proposals to overcome poverty, inequality,
ecological challenges and marginalization of women in
policy-making.”
This is a tall order and requires some digesting. The
Forum’s vision would require us as members of the Nile
Heritage Initiative to be committed to the process of
empowerment of the ordinary people of the continent,
while at the same time or as part of this process, engage
in policy dialogues with all ‘stakeholders.’ But we do
know that a people that are disempowered by existing
power structures cannot engage with those same power
structures as “stakeholders” when these structures that are
at the same time responsible for their exploitation and
disempowerment.
This is because it is the disempowerment and weaknesses
created by those same power structures that make such
dialogue meaningless. The real question is whether the
empowerment of the African exploited masses can be
achieved through policy dialogues, which include the
corporate structures that disempower or through other
means?
This raises the question of our role in society as ‘organic’
intellectuals or civil society organisations engaged in
some form of intellectual and/or society intervention
activities. Our role must go beyond policy engagements
to promote the interests of the marginalised and povertystricken
citizens. It must involve a process of unlearning
and learning not only of the disempowered masses but
also of the disoriented intellectuals who have been
alienated from their cultures and heritages by Western
culture, education and material inducements. This is what
accounts for the widening gap between the African elites
or intellectuals and the masses of the people for what is
real the real missing link in Africa’s transformation-the
distance between the African masses and the African
intellectuals. As Professor Hubert Vilakazi of South
Africa has observed:
“The peculiar situation here is that knowledge of the
principles and patterns of African civilisation (have)
remained with ordinary, uncertificated men and women,
especially of those in rural areas. The tragedy of African
civilisation is that Western-educated Africans became lost
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and irrelevant as intellectuals who could develop African
civilisation further. Historically, intellectuals of any
civilisation are the voices of that civilisation to the rest
of the world; they are the instruments of the development
of the higher culture of that civilisation. The tragedy of
Africa, after conquest by the West, is that her
intellectuals, by and large, absconded and abdicated
their role as developers, minstrels and trumpeters of
African civilisation. African civilisation then stagnated;
what remained alive in the minds of languages of the
overwhelming majority of Africans remained
undeveloped. Uncertificated Africans are denied respect
and opportunities for development; they could not sing
out, articulate and develop the unique patterns of
African civilisation”
Prof. Vilakazi adds that Africa therefore finds herself in
an awkward situation because it needs to develop an
educational system founded upon and building on the
civilisation of the overwhelming majority of its people,
yet her intellectuals are strangers to that civilisation.
They have no spiritual or intellectual sympathetic
relationship with the culture and civilisation embracing
the masses of African people. Yet the biggest spiritual
and mental challenge the African intellectuals face of
their massive re-education process can only be provided
by the African ‘uncertificated’ African men and women
who live largely in rural areas. He concludes:
“We are talking here about a massive cultural revolution
consisting, first, of our intellectuals going back to
ordinary African men and women to receive education of
African culture and civilisation. Second, [this] shall
break new ground in that those un-certificated men and
women shall be incorporated as full participants in the
construction of the high culture of Africa. This shall be
the first instance in history where certificated
intellectuals alone shall not be the sole builders and
determinants of high culture, but shall be working side
by side with ordinary men and women in rural and urban
life. Intellectuals must become anthropologists doing
fieldwork, like Frobenius. But unlike academic Western
anthropologists, African intellectuals shall be doing field
work among their own people as part of a truly great
effort aimed at reconstructing Africa and preparing all of
humanity for conquering the world for humanism.”
Prof. Vilakazi is quoted here at length to demonstrate
that the exercise we are trying to set in motion here has
occupied the sharpest minds of ‘organic intellectuals’ the
African continent. He is also quoted at length because of
the relevance of his ideas to what we are trying to say of
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the need to link the rural communities to African
intellectuals and centres of high learning.
Prof. Vilakazi challenges all of us to wake up to this
reality and create a new relationship between ourselves
and the African masses who are our bearers. Such a
new relationship shall imply a process of unlearning
and relearning on our part. This is the only way we can
resurrect the deep values of African humanism
(Ubuntu) that is so badly needed in today’s gadgetised
and digitised world without the human touch and spirit.
While the problem Vilakazi poses is a real one, there
exists nevertheless a link between the two components
of African society. A non-African cannot play the role
the African elite are required to play in the
transformation of their society. Therefore, the new
approach seeks to build on the unity of the two social
forces as necessary for the reconstruction of Africa
from ruins inflicted by Europe. Just like Vilakazi, who
would like to see the African intelligentsia, being
tutored by their “uncerticificated” men and women to
jointly produce a new African high culture that would
be at the base of the African Renaissance, Y. V.
Mudimbe too would like to see the emergence of a
“wider authority” of a “critical library” of the
westernised African intellectual’s discourses developed
together with “the experience of rejected forms of
wisdom, which are not part of the structures of political
power and scientific knowledge.”
This is a useful reminder despite the fact that Mudimbe
himself, according to the African philosopher D. A.
Masolo: “lamentably fails to emancipate himself from
the vicious circle inherent in the deconstructionist
stance” of how this “usable past” should be used by
African “experts” to construct an “authentic” African
episteme. In short, if we are to join the African masses
in transforming the continent, we must move towards
establishing a truly Pan-African University. The object
of the Pan-African University is indeed to overcome
this epistemological divide between the “uncertificated
Africans” and the African intelligentsia.
Afrikan languages must therefore have to be at the
centre of developing the University at all African
Community Sites of Knowledge. Language, as Cabral
rightly pointed out, is at the centre of articulating a
people’s culture. Cabral pointed out that the African
revolution would have been impossible without African
people resorting to their cultures to resist domination.
Culture, according to him, is therefore a revolutionary
force in society. It is because language has remained an
“unresolved issue” in Africa’s development that present
day education has remained an alien system. Mucere
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Mugo quotes Franz Fanon who wrote: “to speak a
language is to assume its world and carry the weight of
its civilisation” Prof. Kwesi K. Prah has argued
consistently over many years that the absence of
Afrikan languages has been the “key missing link” in
Afrikan development.
What is the Way Forward?
The Way Forward beyond neo-liberal agenda’s is
therefore to move towards an African agenda for social
and economic transformation of the continent.
However, as argued above, this requires our linking
with the African masses through learning and
unlearning processes, which must encompass both the
African intellectual and the African masses. To move
towards the establishment of the Pan-African
University requires developing an epistemology that
can enable us to access the knowledge embedded in our
communities. This is because all knowledge is a
creature of languages and African languages are a store
of immense knowledge and wisdom.
We at the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute have
been working along these lines to create an
epistemology which we have called Afrikology. This
has laid a solid ground for the building of a new
African institution, which is based on the African
peoples’ heritage. As the originators of human
knowledge and wisdom, the African people created a
basis that enabled other societies in Asia and Europe to
develop a global-universal system of knowledge that
emerged from the first human beings in the Human
Cradle located on the continent of Africa -the original
homestead of all humanity. These activities begun with
the grassroots research work of Afrika Study Centre-
ASC in pastoral communities in North-Eastern
Uganda-beginning with traditional conflict resolution
research aimed at overcoming destructive cattle rustling
that went on between the pastoralists and their
agricultural neighbours. These conflicts had
increasingly turned inwards between the pastoralist
communities themselves across the whole region of
East Africa. The research enabled a dialogue to begin
within the communities, which later turned into a
questioning of whether the research activities were
really reaching out to the real issues as understood by
the pastoralist communities themselves.
This questioning led to further programmes in the
communities and academic links, including my
membership of the US-based Social Science Research
Council’s-SSRC programme on human security and
international cooperation in which I had raised the question
of epistemology in dealing with issues of research and
creation of pools of knowledge by scholars and
‘practitioners.’ These ‘field building’ research activities
involved new players that led to a new understanding of
knowledge production and application.
It was in this context that the Marcus Garvey Pan-
Afrikan Institute-MPAI came into existence to engage in
research at a very high academic level in which we began
to raise issues of epistemology in much more considered
form and in the writing of the first monographs on the
issue. These monographs were later developed into fullfledged
monographs on philosophy and epistemology of
Afrikology.
The grassroots research carried out by Afrika Study
Centre-ASC produced results about the way we should
understood pastoral communities and their knowledge
systems. It led to the questioning of the current Eurocentric
epistemologies, including Cartesian ‘scientific epistemeologies.’
The second area of research by ASC was the “Field
Building” research activity in which the challenge made in
the SSRC of New York took on a hands-on grassroots
approach in which certain Community Sites of Knowledge
were identified and included in the dialogues. The SSRC
idea was to bring together into a ‘pool’ ‘all’ knowledge
produced by academic scholars and ‘practitioners’ in their
‘intervention’ activities so that such collected knowledge
would be available to all ‘users.’ My query was that such a
‘pool’ was not inclusive of all the knowledge available in
Uganda-adding that such a proposed model would leave all
‘indigenous knowledge’ out of consideration. The SSRC
agreed to the inclusion of custodians of such knowledge in
the ‘field building’ activity and it was during this activity
that the epistemological issues became transparent for it
turned out that the ‘scholars’ and ‘practitioners’ had long
assumed that their disciplines and methodologies covered
‘indigenous knowledge.’ This was rejected by the
custodians who insisted that their ‘ways of knowing’
(epistemology) were different because they took into
account the communities’ cultural and spiritual values,
which ‘modern’ scientific approach ignored and in fact
castigated as ‘superstitious.’
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This is when the creation of the Marcus Garvey Pan-
Afrikan Institute-MPAI became crucial because it was
found that research on epistemological issues needed to be
raised at a high academic level to problematise existing
Western academic disciplines and epistemologies. This led
to the first theoretical paper written by me entitled:
Epistemological Foundations and Global knowledge
production. This paper was published without
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authorization by the African Political Science
Association in their journal-Journal of African Political
Economy-AJOPE.
At this point, the issue of the establishment of a Pan-
Afrikan university was raised in a paper authored by me
entitled: Towards the establishment of the Pan-African
University, which was also published by the African
Political Science Association in their above-mentioned
journal. Both these papers led to debates amongst the
MPAI research fellows that led to the development of
discussions on ‘Ways of Knowing’ (epistemology) and
‘Ways of Being’ (Ontology) as well as the role of
culture and language in knowledge production.
The first theoretical paper, which advanced Afrikology
as an epistemology that was capable of reaching out to
Community Sites of Knowledge was also produced by
me entitled: Towards an Afrikology of Knowledge
production and African Regeneration, which was
published in the International journal of African
Renaissance Studies of the University of South Africa-
UNISA. This theoretical paper was further developed
and passed through a series of versions of an expanded
Monograph, which finally came to be referred to as:
Afrikology, Philosophy and Wholeness, which is being
published by the Africa Institute of South Africa-AISA
in Pretoria. A further effort was made to develop this
epistemology and relate it to research and the concept of
“Restoration” which emerged out of the research on
‘Restorative Justice.’ This resulted in another
monograph entitled: Research, Hermeneutics,
Transdisciplinarity and Afrikology: Towards a
Restorative Learning and Understanding. This
monograph has been taken on by the UNISA Chair held
by a Ugandan academic Catherine Odora Hoppers who
wants to use to create a framework for developing
African knowledge.
As pointed out above, the idea behind Afrikology as an
epistemology springs from the fact that all cultures and
languages are the producers of knowledge. As producers
of knowledge, all language communities have
something to offer to the pool of human knowledge.
Therefore the many African languages are a treasure
trove of knowledge, which must not just be ‘preserved,’
but reactivated and brought into use to promote African
transformation as well as being available to other
communities, hence its universality.
But since the custodians of this knowledge are the
‘uncertificated’ African men and women living in rural
areas, it follows that they alone can dispense such
knowledge through their universities and centres of
higher learning of which they shall be part. In fact the
African Community Sites of Knowledge in this sense
have become the biggest universities from which the
African intellectuals can derive their discharge their
unlearning and promote a new ‘organic’ restorat5ive
learning and understanding through their own languageslearning
through research and listening and dialogue.
Nothing demonstrates better the importance of
recognising African Community Sites of Knowledge
than the research work which UNESCO carried out in
the 1970s to write a General History of Africa.
According to Prof. Curtin in his chapter in volume 1 of
the UNESCO General History of Africa: Methodology
and African Prehistory, the process of collecting the data
and information to write such a history was a gradual one
so that with the re-emergence of an authentically
Afrocentric history the need arose to “join forces with
the movement for an all-embracing social history in the
first place through an interdisciplinary approach
combining the histories of agriculture, urbanisation, and
social and economic relations, and subsequently as a
result of these advances made in history based on field
surveys. According to him:
“The latter approach freed researchers from the
constraining influence of archives in which the
documents were often unreliable and were basically
flawed because of the prejudices of the people who
compiled them from the time of the slave trade to the end
of the colonial period. The first-hand verbal accounts of
contemporary African victims of colonization have
proved an effective counterweight to the testimony of
official papers. Moreover, as a result of the methodology
evolved for making use of oral tradition, historians of
Africa have become pioneers in that field and have made
a remarkable contribution to its development.”
Prof. Curtin continues that this approach, which had been
adopted by some “far-sighted scholar-administrators in
the colonial service” and which enabled them to collect
“accounts of African traditions, where countermanded by
academic prejudices of people like Murdock, following
the footsteps of the British functionalist anthropologists
by “bluntly asserting that ‘indigenous oral traditions are
completely undependable.’ However, following the
publication of Jan Vansina’s book: Oral Tradition: A
Study in Historical Methodology [1961], in which he and
other scholars, including Africans, “demonstrated the
validity of oral tradition as a historical source, provided
that it was subjected to the necessary critical controls.
The seminars held later by historians in Dakar in 1961
and in Dar es Salaam in 1965 had emphasized the same
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view, “as well as the roles of linguistics and
archaeology,” so long as they were also subjected to the
same critical controls, we should add.
Prof. Curtin also notes that it was the process of the
decolonisation of African history that also liberated
“colonial history” by reversing it, and did away with the
presentation of European conquerors “as heroes of
civilisation.”
“In the work of the historians of decolonisation, the
picture was completely changed and aligned more
closely to the facts: the heroes were the African
resistance fighters, whereas the conquerors were the
leaders of expeditionary columns and colonial
governors, who equated right with might, a policy
always applied with brutality and sometimes with
bloody consequences. A second step forwards was taken
when the spotlight was focussed on the protest and
resistance campaigns which, at the height of the colonial
period, were to pave the way for the national liberation
movements.”
These approaches had rendered outstanding service to
the other social sciences, and what achieved this was not
the interdisciplinary methodology, but that for the first
time African voices through their oral traditions had
brought out the facts of their heritage and knowledge
systems. The African decolonisation struggle had even
gone further to ‘reverse’ the way history was henceforth
to be written: as a social history. Primarily, the results
showed that ‘traditional’ Africa had never been static
and changeless, as the prejudiced Eurocentric historians
such as Coupland had asserted on the History of East
Africa. The studies from oral tradition also disproved
those economists, historians, political scientists and
sociologists who had split Africa into the ‘before’ and
‘after,’ implying separation of traditional and ‘modern’
Africa in which the former was depicted as static and the
later as dynamic because it was said to have ‘jolted
(Africa) into action,” because “before” it was “a world
that had lain sleeping until them.” Curtin ends by
observing that:
“It was the English-speaking anthropologists who were
most put out by the revelation that dynamic internal
forces had been at work in traditional African society.As
functionalists, they had taken the structures of that
society and had set about isolating the different agents
or groups that had played a specific role in the original
balanced state of things; their method entailed analysing
the real and observable present and sifting out
everything that might have been added since the arrival
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of the Europeans, so as to end up with an indigenous
‘model’ in the pristine state, in a sort of timeless
‘anthropological present’. It is true that this approach,
which was dominated by the work of Bronislaw
Malinowski, helped give an insight into the workings of
societies. But this partiality for an Africa that was as
‘primitive’ as possible and, what is more, was
immobilized in the museum of the ethnological present,
tended to strip the peoples of Africa of one of their most
important dimensions: their historical development.
Consequently, historical studies had a positive impact on
functionalism by recalling that the present is by
definition transient’”
In his preface to the General History, Amadou Mahtar
M’Bow, the Director-General of UNESCO, observed
that since the European Middle Ages, which was the
drawing line between the European dark ages and the
modern era, the new Europe was used as the yard stick
for judging other societies, although the Greek Iliad and
Odyssey, based on oral tradition, were rightly regarded
as essential sources of the history of ancient Greece
from which Europe was claiming its heritage for their
renaissance. Much of this source also contained
elements of African history, but this was ignored and
African oral tradition, the collective memory of peoples
of Africa that “holds the thread of many events marking
their lives, was rejected as worthless.”
But, M’Bow added, African oral tradition and history,
“after being long despised, has now emerged as an
invaluable instrument for discovering the history of
Africa, making it possible to follow the movements of
its different peoples in both space and time, to
understand the African vision of the world from inside
and to grasp the original features of the values on which
the cultures and institutions of the continent is based.
Therefore, we have a peoples’ history as the entry point
in going deeper into the African soul to discover what
Africa stood for and what it offers today. The oral
tradition and the hieroglyphs as well as the
archaeological sources, literature, art, religion,
philosophy all offer the opportunity to bridge the
confusing “paradigms,” methodologies and scientific
epistemologies that have alienated humankind from
historical bearings rendering modern society into a
materialistic, greedy and immoral society that
foregrounds self-interest above community. The attempt
to bridge these confusing academic disciplines has been
done by Afrikology, which is a transdisciplinary
approach to knowledge production.
The other “aberration” was the “ethnographic contempt
for the sequence of events” and a tendency to concentrate
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on structures and a certain linguistic approach that
became “blind and deaf” to the dynamics of language,
which was also the weakness of functionalist
anthropologists. Therefore, for African historians, the
interdisciplinary approach was not a question of choice,
but one of necessity and in this respect M’Bow
regarded oral tradition as a “fully-fledge historical
source.”
In this respect too, Ki-Zerbo placed emphasis on
linguistics, which he regarded as an “inexhaustible
historical source, for tradition is encapsulated in the
living museum of language.” It is not only a
psychological entity, its vocabulary “is like
sedimentary layer in which the realities forged by each
people’s history are deposited.” He added: “But
conversely, it is language, the ‘word’, which conveys
the ideological and cultural or political messages and
which makes and unmakes history and makes it afresh
by creating the ideas and rules governing behaviour.
Some of the concepts involved are untranslatable
because they bear the stamp of an entire culture.”
It seems to me that the real problem here is the idea of
the academic disciplines themselves and the
epistemology upon which they are based. Once we
accept that we have to operate within these disciplines
in order to “recreate images of (African) social life,”
ostensibly one that projects their authentic selves, it is
naïve, in my humble opinion, to expect that people who
have been trained and disciplined to see African society
from the outside and whose disciplinary concepts and
ways of thinking are imbued with prejudices built
within the disciplines conceptual frameworks and
language, can abandon these conceptual framework
unless they have internalised another epistemological
framework that accords with the communal and oral
character of the African wholeness, which Afrikology
seeks to overcome.
In short, the scholars must be ideological transformed
to see through the conceptual and theoretical
frameworks they use and to cope different meanings
that cannot sometimes be not only linguistically
translatable but even epistemologically consistent with
the new concepts found within the African traditions
themselves. It is also idealistic and naïve to expect the
intellectuals to just ‘change’ their ‘outlook’ and work
coherently with other equally segmented and
academically fragmented disciplined individuals,
whose ideological positions might be incompatible.
This is even more so if new centres of research and
learning have to be organisationally structured to
accommodate this fragmentation and compartmentalisation,
where the epistemological and ideological
elements are already pre-determined in the structures to
be erected and the individuals to be deployed.
These Eurocentric epistemological and methodological
approaches must be undermined if we are to make any
progress in advancing scholarship under conditions of an
African ‘renaissance’ and regeneration. African scholars
together with the African masses have to create a new
world by being able to recognise their existing
cosmological worlds. As we move from the outside to the
inside, we have to define new approaches of
understanding that are appropriate to the African world.
Academic disciplines in Europe arose with the needs of
the time to serve particular interests. They were not
created by God for all times and for all societies. They
are human creations that serve particular (class) interests.
Prof Ki-Zerbo himself argues that it is an “imperative
requirement” that African history “should at last be seen
from within instead of being interpreted through
references to other societies, readymade ideas and
prejudices.” It is time for us, he challenges, “to take an
inside look at our identity and our growing awareness.”
He is particularly bothered by the fact that “our history is
being explained by a whole series of words and concepts
that have come from Europe or other continents and that
translate - and quite often betray – realities and structures
created in another linguistic and social context.” But we
cannot do this, if at the same time, we detach the
academic disciplines from their concepts and prejudices
by adopting interdisciplinary methodologies, which he
advocated. To do so, we would be moving in vicious
circles with the blissful hope that these same academic
disciplines will deliver us from the problems we seek to
overcome.
So long as the “scientific methodologies,” that were
ideologically “constructed” to animalise the African
people are not themselves problematised, deconstructed
and new epistemologies developed based on African
cosmogonies, it will be difficult to “domesticate” these
same academic disciplines to re-humanise the world.
Linguistic gimmicks will not do unless these are built on
the principle that African languages are the tools through
which a dialogue is possible that alone can promote their
self-understanding and orient African scholars towards
their own societies. This can only be achieved through a
holistic, transdisciplinary Afrikology that foregrounds
dialogue through African languages, which are holistic
and non-fragmented according to academic ‘disciplines.’
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Even in the area of linguistics that we all believe should
be at the core of our work, and it is in fact in this area
that we can be inspired to develop new ways of
knowing ourselves, there is a lot of innovative work
that has to be done. Prof. Greenberg adds that the
Africa displays a greater degree of linguistic
complexity than other continents and that the
classification of African languages that has so far been
carried out by mainly western linguists have created
even more confusion because by following their
individual conceptualisations, “the linguistic divisions
constructed by one researcher or another are
disturbingly reminiscent of the colonial divisions of
yesteryear [Greenberg, 1989: 121].
To cure this problem, he calls for more monographs to
be written so that more “scientific identifications of the
outlines of the groups that may exist between the major
“families” and the basic units, “which are currently the
only irrefutable evidence. For this to be done,
Greenberg, calls for Africans scholars themselves to do
this work and this cannot be done in my view without
the African griots and other indigenous linguistic
experts becoming part of the process of research and
teaching.
This work was in fact begun with the pioneering
attempt by Cheikh Anta Diop to link the Egyptian
language with several West African languages followed
by the work of Professor Theophile Obenga in the same
field. It was with their work and struggle that the
ancient Egyptian language, which had previously been
linked to Semitic group of languages, was corrected at
the UNESCO Symposium organised in Cairo in 1974
on ‘The Peopling of Ancient Egypt” to be part of the
family of African languages. This major achievement
brought nearer the acknowledgement of Egypt as an
African civilisation and not an Asiatic one as had been
argued by the Eurocentric ‘Egyptologists.’
The essence of the matter is that African scholars must
be prepared to do the kind of research that is original
and that can enable them to abandon Eurocentric
clothing of academia and engage in dialogue with the
experts in their communities. They have to admit that
in that case, they alone cannot determine the research
agenda from above, but must humble themselves to
come under the feet of the African sages and griots, just
like the Greek students like Plato did in Egypt to learn
at the feet of the Egyptian scribes. The designing of the
research is not a top-down affair. It has to involve those
who have the knowledge and information required for
whatever is desired to be achieved by the research. In
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that case, the methodology cannot be predetermined. It
has to be ‘negotiated’ with those ‘who know’ and
during this process, the problem of the academic
disciplines in which the hypotheses are formulated will
be determined by the result of the dialogue between the
researcher and (the researched)-those who know. The
crucial question will be: “What is the purpose of the
knowledge to be created.” Is it for knowledge’s sake or
is it intended to result in some good for the community
who will participate in such a research and knowledge
production? This question cannot be answered in the
abstract. It can only be answered with the people who
can produce the knowledge and for whom it should be
produced because they will know what use it is for.
Time has come when the African elites must stop
looking down at their community compatriots as
ignorant and illiterate, while the villagers look upon
them as agents of foreign culture and economic
interests. Hostility exists between the two and there is
no trust between them since relationships between them
is based on top-down “development” dictates passed on
by the elite to the “ignorant masses.” This is the reason
why African cultures and civilisation have stagnated,
only changing to accommodate foreign inspired
solutions.
If we are therefore we are to create and provide space
and platform for African automous thinking on issues
of the future of the continent free from disadvantageous
foreign influences that have resulted in Africa’s
weakening, we have to begin by liberating ourselves
from the dominant epistemologies and adopt such an
epistemology such as Afrikology that can enable us to
draw knowledge and inspiration from our own
heritages, which our people created through their
languages. This knowledge is a living knowledge and
incorporates our heritages. A Nile Heritage has deep
roots in the origins of the Human Cradle, which is
located in the Nile Valley. Ethiopian, Nubian and
Egyptian civilisations were its flowering. Since then,
our heritage was invaded and taken over by foreigners
in Egypt and now in the rest of the continent. This
injurious invasion must be fought back as the struggle
in the Sudan has demonstrated. It is a long and arduous
struggle, which must not only take an armed form. It
has foremost to take the form of RESISTANCE
THROUGH KNOWLEDGE and such knowledge is to
be found deep in our heritage. So let us work on it. We
are very much behind time.
☻☻☻☻☻☻

Intellectuals and Just Causes
The Academic, Intellectual and Pan-African Legacy
of Dani Wadada Nabudere
By Kwesi Kwaa Prah
Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society
(CASAS), Cape Town
Introduction
As we live and plod through the humdrum of our
everyday lives, our appreciation of the intellect of the
personalities we interact and live with is often lost on us
and difficult to appraise or estimate. Part of the difficulty
arises out of the fact that; we cannot or do not summarize
until processes or lives have run their natural courses;
when distance and the terminal character of death compel
us to tally our impressions. Even then biographical
summaries are notoriously idiosyncratic saying as much
about the summarizer as the person who is assessed.
The English bard says, "all the world's a stage", but our
scripts have circumstantial genealogy, varied intellectual
groundings, as well as individual autonomy and signature.
Dani Wadada Nabudere came on and has gone off-stage,
and left us with reverberating silences and enduring
memories. His intellectual legacy and political impact on
Uganda and the global Pan-African scene will remain
secure. In the programme write-up for this event the
organizers point out that Nabudere's;
… political, intellectual and community work spanned
over half a century of public activism. He was an
inspiring speaker, indefatigable mobilizer and organizer
and a prolific publisher. Key among his issues of
engagement were: food security; peace; knowledge
heritages; Africa's contribution to humanizing the world;
life-long learning; cross-border solidarities; international
political economy; Pan-Africanism of peoples; defence of
the commons; cognitive justice and Community Sites of
Knowledge; and restorative governance, economy and
justice. The communities, institutions, groups and
networks that Prof. Nabudere inspired, founded, led or
brought together can be found at all levels: local, subregional,
national, regional, cross-border, continental and
global. They range in type from ancestral clans and
minority groups to Universities, donor agencies and
global solidarities. They came together for reasons of
mutual concern and/or shared commitment. Each sought
in its own way to respond to Nabudere's call for
community and popular- level engagement with tackling
the crisis of modernity, locally, across the globe
('globally'). They remain concerned that any solutions to
the current global problems and challenges should be
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designed and driven in the interests of the majorities of
the planet in their various communities, and not
powerful minorities that precipitate or profit from the
world's increasingly destructive recurrent economic,
political and ecological crisis.
This broad sweep of activist engagement was
uninterruptedly sustained for all his life. Throughout the
vicissitudes and convulsions of post-colonial African
political life, Nabudere's legacy as a political and
scholarly actor remained exemplary. He dared to think
radically and politically acted with pluck and mettle. He
displayed with repetitive confirmation steadfastness and
"essential guts", daring to confront and speak truth to
power. He stuck to his guns.
As creatures of time and history, we bear the markings
of our age, its triumphs and flourishes, paradoxes and
inanities. We make choices. I am not positing a simple
choice between intellectual sovereignty and contingency,
between volition and fate or between what is
immediately realizable and what might in due course
become realizable. I am referring to the circumstantial,
social and historical baggage we carry as humans;
cultural baggage embedded in our weltanschauung, the
way we view the world. We must and do have the freewill
to follow our own life choices, but we do not do this
in a historical or sociological vacuum. It was Marx who
made this idea common intellectual currency with a
passage in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte that;
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as
they please; they do not make it under self-selected
circumstances, but under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all
dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains
of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with
revolutionizing themselves and things, creating
something that did not exist before, precisely in such
epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up
the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from
them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to
present this new scene in world history in time-honoured
disguise and borrowed language. …. In like manner, the
beginner who has learned a new language always
translates it back into his mother tongue, but he
assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses
himself freely in it only when he moves in it without
recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
These days, it is often unfavourably regarded to call into
evidence the work of Marx. But Marx remains one of the
most important post-European Enlightenment thinkers.
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Indeed, in many respects, as a scholar, the perspicuity,
length, breadth and depth of his contributions remain
unrivalled to this day. In fundamentals it continues to be
unchallenged as grand social theory; it is also a
methodologically yielding approach to our understanding
of the social process. No body of ideas has influenced the
course of human history in the last hundred years of
history as dramatically as Marxism both as a theoretical
construct and a practical or institutional representation. In
large state formations with sizeable proportions of
humanity as China and the Soviet Union, as official
ideology, for better or for worse, it has indelibly shaped
the organization of social life. In both these countries and
others like Cuba and Vietnam it has been successfully
pressed into service as a theoretical basis for resistance
against Western imperialism.
On the other hand, it has also been utilized to spawn
despotism and mail-fisted rule. From Stalin (Soviet
Union) to Ceausescu (Rumania) to the Kim dynasty in
North Korea and Pol Pot in Cambodia perverted statesanctioned
formulations of Marxism have been employed
to operate tin-pot and brutal dictatorships. However, all
said, Marxism as a sociological tool of analysis remains in
many ways theoretically unrivalled.
Nabudere started his extended intellectual journey with
Marx. It was a journey which was not only a scholastic
enterprise, but also in equal measure an activist
endeavour, more pointedly an attempt to direct
intellectual arsenal for the betterment of the human
condition in Africa. For our generation, Nabudere was
one of the most outstanding interpreters of Marxist
thought between the late 60s and early 80s of the last
century. His Political Economy of Imperialism and
Imperialism and Revolution in Uganda remain till today
definitive testimonies of African scholastic encounters
with Marxian approaches to social analysis of the period.
His work with Yash Tandon, recently republished (The
Crash of International Finance-Capital and Its
Implications for the Third World) displays robustly
studied, time-consuming scholarship and eloquent and
lucid critique of late capitalism. A historical
contextualization of his work is important for an
understanding of its larger import.
The 60s was the "decade of African Independence." At
the end, two-thirds of Africans emerged out of colonial
tutelage. In Indo-China Western imperialism was taken on
and triumphantly trounced by the Vietnamese people.
In East Europe, different peoples in the vast Soviet empire
rose in challenge to Russian imperialism. The Irish fought
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for their freedom and civil liberties, and in the United
States African-Americans said a loud "no, enough is
enough"! to the persistent and longstanding racism of
Uncle Sam. Cuba stood up to the United States. Women
everywhere rejected sexism and discrimination. The
birth of modern armed struggle against colonial rule
emerged in Africa. This was a new instalment of the
African resistance which was temporarily stamped
underfoot by the colonial powers at the end of the 19th
century and which continued in sporadic outbursts until
the Land and Freedom War of the 50s, otherwise known
as the Mau Mau Resistance. Those were inspirationally
bracing years. They shaped our thinking and action for
the decades that followed.
In hindsight, it may appear to some that the drift from
Marxism to African spirituality and the assertions of
cultural heritage even if it is modernist and radical
remains a contradiction; that this is an attempt to
reconcile extreme opposites. I think this view is illconsidered.
But is it eclectic? Is it a mixture of ideas
which do not mix? Is it an indication of intellectual
discontinuity? No. What some of us have found and
think is that at worst it is fruitful or elucidatory
eclecticism and at best a subtly blended and historically
constructed edifice of intellectual maturity; a better
understanding and appreciation of the realities of the
African world and what needs to be done if Africans are
to march forward towards modernity and meaningful
democracy with institutions adapted to the concrete
realities of African society; a new Africa built on the
legacy and cultural foundations of Africans.
A modern Africa which is African must use its
languages as languages of instruction at all levels of
education. This is how all modern societies in Europe
and Asia have done it. Languages hold memory, history
and identity. They instrumentally define and describe
reality for us; they store knowledge, its production and
reproduction. African development requires the
intellectualization of African languages. Our languages
need to absorb the universal intellectual offering of our
times. When African languages are scientifically
empowered, they will become viable instruments for
lifting up mass society. Without this development cannot
be effectuated. Language lies at the heart of culture;
indeed, the core area of culture. Without language,
cultures die; they vanish into extinction; the endangered
groups are assimilated into the dominant or hegemonic
cultures of the times.
A common fault of the generation of the sixties was that
oftentimes Marxism took on a theoretical logic of its
own; flighty and totally abstracted from the realities of
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Continued from page 50– Intellectuals and Just Causes
everyday life. In some cases it was dogmatically and
canonically rendered. Unhelpful and sterile statesponsored
articulations were offered in the name of
orthodoxy. Some ideologically affiliated more with
specific communist states and state-ideologies than with
the unprejudiced reading of the philosophy and ideas of
Marx and Engels. Such philistinism encouraged the
discrediting of the intellectual standing of Marxian
methodology as a useful and credible science of society.
There were indeed also others who because they had
been immodestly wedded to the orthodoxy of Novosty
Press jumped ship with the collapse of the Soviet Union
and moved on to the wily and superficial seductions of
post-modernism, with no explanations. Today, the
gimcrackery; the glamour of the empty verbal finery of
post-modernism has inevitably faded. My judgement of it
articulated some years ago remains confirmed in my
mind. It was and remains fatuous and vacuous verbiage
spun in jargonized in-group language which effectively
obscures than reveals reality. My evaluation was that;
Inadvertently, post-modernism has tried to bring to both
dilettantist and professional social science writing, a
certain loose elegance, free from the staid and stolid
language of pretentious "searchers for the truth." While
it, by inspiration, attempted to escape the colourlessness
of dry language, it has ended up as an over-adorning
linguistic cult, bristling invariably with stock language,
dogmatic non-essentialism, licentious deconstruction, an
inordinate fear of grand narratives, the cultivation of
layered and embedded textuality, and the vulgar
cultivation of ego-feeding individual narratives through
which "everything goes." It is today, more a reflection of
the zeitgeist of late-capitalism than new or ennobled
scientific wisdom. What has the African scholar obsessed
with African problems got to do with all this? 1
1 K. K. Prah. African Scholars and Africanist Scholarship
(1998). In, Soundings. CASAS Book Series. No.74. Cape
Town. 2010. P.15.
In short it attempted to make sense out of nonsense and
nonsense out of sense. With the years and age, many find
that one cannot profitably abandon the hard theoretical
insights and benefits of Marxian historical analysis and
the use of Marxian categories in the understanding of
social and economic dynamics, for mushy neo-liberal
rationalizations and justifications of the status quo.
Rather, one learns to face realities on the ground and the
challenges of everyday life better with a mellowed
appreciation and understanding of the implications of
Marxian assumptions. Marxism is not "revealed truth"; it
is a method of understanding the social process in order
to change it for the benefit of ever-widening demographic
proportions of social classes. Marxism has been more
influential than any transformatory theory in the past
century. However it remains for us, only one of the many
intellectual influences that one has experienced and
shapes our thinking. Universally, it continues in many
different ways to impact social theory and approaches to
the understanding of the workings of society.
During the early 60s, the idea of the "engaged
intellectual" was an issue of frequent and lively debate,
The notion has been simply defined as "someone (like
Nabudere) who is intensely curious about the world
around him/her, constantly in the act of researching
people, himself/herself, and the politics of social
interactions and injustices, working as an educator either
formally or informally to bring people together for
reasons of solidarity, and consciously merging
'intellectual' theory and everyday practice in
life/pedagogy to work for social change."2 Many of us
shared this disposition not on account of the fact that it
was fashionable and intellectually suave, but because it
spoke to our wishes and desires to help emancipate
Africans and Africa from the vice of neocolonialism.
Nabudere excelled in this disposition.
2 Stephanie Jones.
http://engagedintellectual.wordpress.com/about/
3 Chinua Achebe. Morning Yet on Creation Day.
Michigan: Heinemann Educational. 1975. P.19.
The simultaneous and interactive engagement of
intellectual and social processes has always meant a
rejection of the philosophy of "art for art sake". I love
Chinua Achebe's pithy judgment that "art for art's sake is
just another piece of deodorized dog shit."3 In similar
vein, the pursuit of knowledge as an activity of,
"gentlemen of leisure"; endeavours which are carried out
with cultivated snootiness in ivory towers, with little or
no bearing on the lot of the hoi polloi had no place in the
intellectual make-up of Dani Wadada Nabudere. He
dared to socially engage. He kept faith with time-tested
tenets of historical and intellectual scholarship based
upon the philosophical conviction that human beings
make their own histories.
Practically, we are as humans capable of shaping and
crafting our realities, dismantling, revising and recreating
our worlds as perceived needs dictate. To effectively do
this, one must be socially committed; assume affiliation
and identification with a cause; either with a social
movement or philosophical principles or both. For us,
this need is most pertinently and forcefully justified by
the fact that as Africans in a competitive world of
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peoples, at this point in time and history, we find
ourselves at the bottom of the heap.
The dehumanizing conditions in which we in our
overwhelming masses live are abominable. The tyrannies
we have to endure under our leaders are unconscionable.
The racist indignities we have to live with in both Africa
and outside Africa are unacceptable. Human and
universally acknowledged human rights continue in one
country after the other to be dispensed in short and
uneven rations. The qualities of our leaderships remain
shabby and too often pathetic. As "engaged intellectuals"
there has to be identification not with the president or
any other latter-day nabob but with considerations of
justice, egalitarianism, tolerance, truth, democracy and
human rights. Such concerns don't occur in a hermitic
laboratory or a cloistered library. We confront them daily
in our diurnal existential transactions. These are realities
Nabudere fully appreciated and worked tirelessly in both
mind and body to redress. He directed the conclusions of
his intellectual pursuits to resolving the societal trials and
tribulations of the masses not only in Uganda, but also in
the wider African world. He never shied away from the
challenges of Ugandan politics; maintaining consistently
principled positions in his political stance.
In Uganda, he was Minister of Justice in 1979 and
Minister of Culture, Community Development and
Rehabilitation between 1979 and 1980 in the Uganda
National Liberation Front (UNLF) Interim Government.
He returned to active state politics for a limited spell
after he returned from exile in 1992, representing
Budadiri West in the Constituent Assembly in 1994-
1995. At a later point in time, he considered presidential
candidature.
Deepening and continuing his journey into
intellectualized Africanism, Nabudere in recent years
found traction and affinity with the concept of
Africology. Molefi Asante writes that the evolution of
the notion of Africology evolved out of Black Studies in
the US. "One sign of the maturity of the field that has
been called Black Studies since its inception in the 1960s
is the debate around the naming of what it is that scholars
in the field do. ….. My own perspective, grounded in an
Afrocentric idea, is that the name for the field should be
Africology. .... Van Horne pushed for the term
Africology (1994), after reading the term Afrology in my
book, Afrocentricity (2001)." 4
4 Molefi Kete Asante. Africology: Naming an Intellectual
Enterprise in our Field. 4/14/2009.
http://www.asante.net/articles/3/africology-naming-anintellectual-
...
Explaining the historical genealogy of the idea he
writes that; "On the other hand, Turner had moved into
Cornell at a time when the term Africana Studies was
being used and promoted its use. Neither term seemed
to catch traction at first as both departments at
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Cornell remained isolated
beacons. Van Horne held a series of intellectual
conferences at Milwaukee with leaders in the field to
underscore the important of Africology. Africana
Studies, although reminiscent in sound to many people
of the term Afrikaner Studies, a reflection of the white
minority regime in South Africa, kept growing until it
had captured several important departments. Pan-
African Studies was an early competitor but soon
petered out at Kent State, Temple, and University of
Louisville. There are still vestiges of that term in some
places. By the end of the l990s Africana Studies, in a
purely numerical sense, had gained ground on the
indomitable Black Studies as a name for programs. In
some places departments had seen the shift from Black
Studies, Afro American Studies, African American
Studies, to Africana Studies. Temple under the
leadership of Molefi Asante leaned toward Africology."
In summary elaboration of the notion, he argued that;
"Africology is the Afrocentric study of African
phenomena. This is in keeping with my belief that
definitions should be meaningful, establish boundaries,
and have substance. If one cannot define the name of
the field and give it meaning, then a field may not exist.
I do not try to define Africana Studies, for example,
because I do not know what it means in practical terms.
I can define African Diaspora Studies but the definition
frightens me because it isolates Africa from the rest of
the African world. These are some knotty issues that
are avoided when we say Africology. To say it is the
Afrocentric study means that it is not the European
study, the Arab study, the Christian study, etc., of the
phenomena, but the Afrocentric study which clarifies
where we are coming from in our approach to the study
of the phenomena. To be Afrocentric is to seek African
agency in every situation, analysis, or critique. It is the
study of African phenomena which means that it is not
limited to the United States, Brazil, or Africa. In fact, it
opens the door for a discussion of Belizean phenomena
or Comoros phenomena."5 In short we can say that, the
term is effectively a notional gestalt for all studies
related to global Africans from an African perspective.
5 Asante continues that; "….. It was clear to those early
leaders of the field that a simple aggregation of courses
about black people was not Black Studies. What is
more some universities had courses on their books that
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Continued from page 52 – Intellectuals and Just Causes
discussed social problems and identified the courses as
"the Problem of the Negro", or issues of social justice. In
the South, black colleges often had courses called "Negro
History" on the books. None of these courses or
conventions ever came close to what the students of the
l960s were demanding of the institutions of higher
learning. They wanted courses, indeed curricula, taught
from a black perspective. Those programs that decided
that black studies meant an aggregation of courses about
black people merely went to their faculties and asked
who wanted to teach courses on Black literature, Black
history, Black psychology, or Black Rhetoric. Once you
were able to find a sufficient number of persons to teach
you could announce that you had a Black Studies
program possibly with a major or minor. This is not to be
disparaged because it laid the foundation for some
intense reflection on the parts of the faculty. Already
there were those professors, such as Winston Van Horne
at Wisconsin-Milwaukee and James Turner at Cornell,
with ideas for the naming of the departments and
programs." See also; William Nelson. Africology:
Building an Academic Discipline. In, Nathanial Norment
(ed). The African American Studies Readers. Carolina
Academic Press, Durham. 2007. Pp. 68-73. Also,
Winston Van Horne, Africology: A Discipline of the
Twenty-First Century. In, Nathanial Norment (ed), Ibid.
Pp. 411-419.
6 Dani Wadada Nabudere. Towards An Africology of
Knowledge Production and African Regeneration. This
Paper Is Part Of A Wider Research Under A
Collaborative Research Agenda Between Unisa and
Afrika Study Centre, Mbale. Mimeo. 2005.
In his long paper, Towards an Africology of Knowledge
Production and African Regeneration, constructing his
discourse on Africological grounds Nabudere writes that;
African scholars must pursue knowledge production that
can renovate African culture, defend the African people's
dignity and civilizational achievements and contribute
afresh to a new global agenda that can push us out of the
crisis of modernity as promoted by the European
Enlightenment. Such knowledge must be relevant to the
current needs of the masses, which they can use to bring
about a social transformation out of their present plight.
We cannot just talk about the production of 'knowledge
for its own sake' without interrogating its purpose. There
cannot be such a thing as the advancement of science for
its own sake. Those who pursue 'science for its own sake'
find that their knowledge is used for purposes, which
they may never have intended it for. Eurocentric
knowledge is not produced just for its own sake. Its
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purpose throughout the ages has been to enable them to
'know the natives' in order to take control of their
territories, including human and material resources for
their benefit. Such control of knowledge was used to
exploit the non-European peoples, colonise them both
mentally and geo-strategically, as well as subordinate
the rest of the world to their designs and interests.
We see in this passage the dialectics of the thinker and
the doer; the tutored and cultivated mind and the man
of action, insistently pressing the point home that; ideas
and knowledge must not only attempt to understand the
world but also change and mould it towards the
upliftment of African humanity. He develops the
argument thus;
The issue of an African Renaissance, which has been
advanced politically, especially by President Mbeki,
cannot just be viewed as an event in the politics of the
African political elites, although that may be their
purpose. It has to be taken up, problematized,
interrogated, and given meaning that goes beyond the
intentions of its authors and involve the masses of the
African people in it if it has the potentiality to mobilise.
It can be used as an occasion for beginning the journey
of African psychological, social, cultural as well as the
political liberation. It can also be used as a mobilisation
statement and the basis for articulating an African
agenda for knowledge production that is not just
relevant to African conditions, but also sets an agenda
for the reclaiming of African originality of knowledge
and wisdom, which set the rest of human society on the
road of civilisation. The attempt made to establish the
Centre of African Renaissance Studies-CARS must be
seen as just one example of such attempts. But for this
attempt to succeed it has to begin by challenging the
dominant Eurocentric world outlook, philosophies and
epistemologies, which still defiantly continue to
disorganise the African continent turning it into a
backyard of imperialist exploitation and plunder. The
Eurocentric knowledge of us, which we call 'scientific
knowledge', still dominates the psychology of the
African political, economic and academic elites and
through religion, the African masses as well. This
means that as we go about carrying out the task of
rediscovering Africa's past as scholars, we have already
to begin to problematize the very basis of such 'studies',
not because of their specific importance in the
scholarship of South Africa, but in the context of
creating the basis for an innovative epistemology and
methodology in which such 'studies' can be pursued.
We already have experiences of "African studies,"
which end in propagating and promoting Eurocentric
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Continued from page 53 – Nabudere: An Uncompromising
Revolutionary
ideological prejudices in the investigation of 'African
problems'. 7
7
Dani Wadada Nabudere. Ibid.
In this short injunction, expressed with intellectual
vigour and aplomb, we are left in no doubt what the
score is, what the issues are, and what is expected of us.
The clarity of mind and lucidity of expression, invariably
uttered in measured prose and pace leaves no one in
doubt about where he stood. The reader who reads
between the lines or the attentive listener cannot fail to
sense that these utterances, offered with calm and smooth
expression masked an unseen intellectual volcano
blazing trenchantly and testily. The style was always
level-headed and balanced, but the mind behind it was
seismic. Deep inside it, the tensions and contradictions of
the zeitgeist seethed and flared with punctuated
regularity in molten intellectual fury. Sometimes in
reaction to questions, this magma of intellect would
surface with scorching and blistering verbal
consequences. I daresay, once his mind was set in a fresh
pattern of conviction, he was visited by a sense of
unshakeable persuasion and his discourse assumed an
imprint of resolute moral and emotional force.
The perception of African interest and the pursuit of
liberatory causes came almost as second nature to him.
One never had any need to canvas his mind in support of
Africanist objectives. Because of this ability and
intellectual gift, his views gravitated almost naturally
towards avant gardism, even as old age, with its
attendant frailties and infirmities began to take their toll.
His Africanist instincts never deserted him. He remained
always to the end creatively obsessed with Africanist
causes. It is not by accident that the institution he
founded from small beginnings 9
to what it has become was named after one of the most
important Pan-Africanists of the last century, Marcus
Garvey. Nabudere told me that he met his wife Ida, a
South African, at Africa Unity House (later Nyaniba
House) at Queens Gate in London during the beginning
of the sixties. This was a centre for Pan-African youth
and students in Britain at the time.
I had the fortune to work closely with Nabudere on Pan-
African issues for a good part of three decades. He never
aged and never got stuck in any intellectual time-warp.
He always swam with the tide of ideas and was able to
adapt his views to changing circumstances without pride
or prejudice. He was learning all the time and his ideas
were in ceaseless evolution. I have it on record that
Nabudere rejected continentalism; the definition of
Africans and Africanism which emphasizes geography
at the expense of historical and cultural attributes. In
the last few years, we have been involved with
preparations towards an 8th Pan-African Congress.
Nabudere shared the view that, without unity there is
no future for us as Africans in the emergent world.
His Africanism and the sophisticated nature of his
understanding led him to see the logic of identifying
with the people where they stand; with their customs,
beliefs, values, attitudes, sentiments and resentiments.
He understood that clanship, extended families, rituals
and the traditions of the rural and urban masses of
Africa are living realities of the contemporary world. It
is impossible to relate to these masses when there is no
understanding for these realities; or a dismissal of these
realities as backward or atavistic representations. This
understanding led Nabudere back to the countryside;
back to his roots and back to his people, engaging them
in people-to-people relations, the settlement of
community disputes and the celebration of our timeless
customs and beliefs. His life and intellectual trajectory
was in fact an attestation of the Sankofa Principle.
Prof Prah was the keynote speaker at the Nabudere
memorial
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Marcus Garvey Movement
owes Large Debt to
Caribbean Expats
By Meg Sullivan
August 18, 2011
Conventional wisdom has long held that Marcus
Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association,
which advocated racial self-help and the unity of the
African diaspora, grew out of the heady political and
cultural environment of the Harlem Renaissance and
benefited African Americans above all other black
people. Any Caribbean role, according to this view,
was separate and incidental to the primary legacy
bequeathed to American race relations by the
charismatic Jamaica native.
Now a UCLA historian argues the reverse in the first
book of a multi-volume series on the Garvey movement
and the Caribbean. From the UNIA's organizational
structure to its most valuable foot soldiers during its
first half-decade, Garvey's Caribbean links were
indispens-able to the movement's success, and the
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Large Debt to Caribbean Expats
region ultimately proved to be its most important theater,
contends Robert A. Hill in "The Marcus Garvey and
Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: The
Caribbean Diaspora 1910–1920."
Researching the volume "was an eye-opener in many,
many ways," said Hill, a UCLA history professor and a
leading authority on Garvey and the UNIA, which began
in Jamaica but attained its greatest influence after Garvey
established it in the U.S. in 1917. Caribbean nationals,
both in America and abroad, Hill says, were the seed that
grew the movement.
"Although the movement developed here and was based
in America, it was predominantly a Caribbean
movement, at least until federal prosecution of Garvey in
the early 1920s drew the attention of African Americans
and galvanized their support of him," he said.
"The Caribbean Diaspora 1910–1920" is scheduled to be
published Sept. 6 by Duke University Press. With more
than 400 documents, many of them newly discovered, it
is the opening salvo in the third and final series of a vast
collection of primary materials by and about Garvey and
the UNIA, considered the largest mass political
movement in black history. Highlights from the volume
include Garvey's earliest known published work, a 1911
letter to the editor of a newspaper in Costa Rica, where
he was living among fellow Caribbean expatriates
employed on banana plantations; a 1912 letter to a Belize
newspaper criticizing social conditions under British
colonial rule in that country; and a 1920 letter written
from New York to the governor of British Guiana in
which Garvey says that the majority of his followers are
from the English-speaking West Indies.
Hill, who is now on the cusp of retirement, has been
collecting documents that relate to Garvey and the UNIA
since the early 1970s. The archival results have been
housed since 1977 at UCLA in the Marcus Garvey &
UNIA Papers Project within the university's James S.
Coleman African Studies Center. The project is
sponsored by the National Historical Publication and
Records Commission of the U.S. National Archives and
Records Administration.
"The Caribbean Diaspora 1910-1920," the 11th volume
so far in Hill's publishing project, comes on the heels of a
three-volume series exploring Garvey's links to Africa.
The project started with a seven-volume series relating to
Garvey's role in the United States. The complete edition,
of which Hill is editor-in-chief, is expected to fill 15
volumes and more than 13,000 printed pages. He hopes
to complete the project in 2015.
Next year marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of
Garvey, a journalist, publisher, orator and political
activist who was a staunch proponent of black
nationalism in the United States and who is best
remembered for his "back to Africa" movement of the
1920s and his support of African freedom, all under the
banner of the slogan "Africa for the Africans." He
founded the Black Star Line shipping venture, which
attracted wide support and helped fund his movement,
but his efforts to sell stock in the venture eventually led
to his conviction on mail fraud charges in the U.S.
After serving three years of a five-year sentence,
Garvey was deported to Jamaica in late 1927.
Garvey lived out his last years in Jamaica and England.
Although he died in political obscurity in London in
1940, he eventually came to be considered the
progenitor of the "black is beautiful" and Black Power
movements in the U.S. in the 1960s.
"Garvey was the first man on a mass scale and level to
give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny
and make the Negro feel he was somebody," Martin
Luther King Jr. once said. Yet until the federal
government's 1922 indictment on mail fraud charges
and his 1923 trial, only a smattering of African
Americans took a major interest in the man who many
would come to refer to as the "Black Moses," Hill
found.
Before that time, Garvey's followers were largely
fellow Caribbean nationals here and abroad. Hill said
the UNIA, which Garvey first founded in Jamaica two
years before coming to the U.S. and which he launched
in New York in 1917, "took off like a rocket" between
the November 1918 armistice ending World War I and
the UNIA's first major gathering in August 1920, which
drew some 20,000 participants to New York's Madison
Square Garden.
The bulk of UNIA members and followers in this
critical period were immigrants from British colonies in
the Caribbean, who, bitterly disillusioned with the
experience of British racism after patriotically serving
in World War I, turned to Garvey and the UNIA. Many
had worked on the construction of the Panama Canal
and, following its completion in 1914, had flowed into
the United States. Some 150,000 Caribbean natives
are estimated to have worked on the building of
the canal.
Caribbean nationals not only constituted Garvey's main
body of followers, but they served as the primary
Continued on page 56
-55- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 55 – Marcus Garvey Movement owes
Large Debt to Caribbean Expats
vectors for disseminating the message of the UNIA.
Within the U.S., Caribbean immigrants spread Garvey's
reach by introducing his message to widely scattered
communities outside of large African American
population centers, including Detroit; Pittsburgh;
Newport News, Va.; New Orleans; Charleston, S.C.;
New Madrid, Mo.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Miami; Los
Angeles; and Riverside, Calif. Meanwhile, Caribbean
nationals spread Garvey's message throughout the West
Indies and the countries of Central and South America,
where they had been employed on the Panama Canal and
on the railroads and banana plantations of the United
Fruit Company, a U.S. conglomerate that specialized in
the tropical fruit trade.
"Without the immigrant base, it seems unlikely that the
Garvey movement would ever have arisen on the scale
that it did nor as rapidly as it did," Hill said. "The two
were symbiotic."
In fact, the UNIA's basic organizational structure was
modeled on the "friendly societies" of the Caribbean.
Caribbean immigrants brought these popular fellowship
organizations with them to the United States, Hill found.
Between the period of slave emancipation in the 1830s
and World War II, these "friendly societies" formed the
organizational bedrock of Caribbean society wherever
these immigrants settled. Offering funeral and sick
benefits, the societies served as gathering places,
melding social and cultural needs with political
organization. To attract followers, the UNIA adopted the
same roles and became practically indistinguishable from
these ethnic fellowship organizations.
"No matter where they lived, large numbers of
immigrants from the Caribbean identified very strongly
with the UNIA and with Garvey because the UNIA
became a way of maintaining their cultural identity and
connection with the rest of the Caribbean," Hill said. As
a result, Garvey's efforts helped forge a common ethnic
identity for immigrants from Jamaica, Barbados,
Trinidad, Antigua, Grenada, St. Vincent, St Lucia, the
English-speaking Virgin Islands and the Bahamas.
"Even though Garvey was from Jamaica, citizens of
other West Indian territories identified in large numbers
with him," Hill explained. "The Caribbean diaspora's
new sense of ethnic unity forged in the United States
became the launching pad for this amazing movement, as
well as reinforced the wider sense of Caribbean identity."
Following his deportation from the U.S., Garvey returned
to Jamaica, where he was involved in politics and sought
but failed to get elected to the colonial legislature there.
However, he succeeded in launching the English
colony's first political party. Indeed, the most lasting
impact of Garveyism was felt in the formerly colonial
Caribbean, where his followers went on to agitate
successfully for the establishment of trade unions,
political parties and cultural institutions and, ultimately,
for self-government. "Garveyism was the political
spark that led the way forward and fed that
transformation," Hill said.
Garvey's resulting impact created a long paper trail,
enriching and complicating Hill's task. "Because the
Garvey movement represented such a novel challenge
to colonial rule, every territory in the Caribbean
collected and carried out surveillance on the movement
and on Garvey," Hill said. "So the archives in each
territory had a copious amount of material that had to
be collected, edited and annotated."
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/garvey-movementowes-debt-to-carribean-211486.aspx
☻☻☻☻☻☻
MARCUS GARVEY QUOTES
“We are men; we have souls, we have passions,
we have feelings, we have hopes, we have
desires, like any other race in the world. The
cry is raised all over the world today of
Canada for the Canadians, of America for the
Americans, of England for the English, of
France for the French, of Germany for the
Germans - do you think it is unreasonable that
we, the Blacks of the world, should raise the
cry of Africa for the Africans?”
Let us in shaping our own Destiny set before us
the qualities of human JUSTICE, LOVE,
CHARITY, MERCY AND EQUITY. Upon such
foundation let us build a race, and I feel that the
God who is Divine, the Almighty Creator of the
world, shall forever bless this race of ours, and
who to tell that we shall not teach men the way
to life, liberty and true human happiness?
The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but
rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.
Continued on page 57
-56- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 56– Marcus Garvey Quotes
All peoples are struggling to blast a way
through the industrial monopoly of races and
nations, but the Negro as a whole has failed to
grasp its true significance and seems to delight
in filling only that place created for him by the
white man.
I am not opposed to the white race as charged
by my enemies. I have no time to hate any one.
All my time is devoted to the up-building and
development of the Negro Race.
For us to examine ourselves thoroughly as a
people we will find that we have more traitors
than leaders, because nearly everyone who
essays to lead the race at this time does so by
first establishing himself as the pet of some
philanthropist of another race, to whom he will
go and debase his race in the worst form,
humiliate his own manhood, and thereby win the
sympathy of the great benefactor, who will
dictate to him what he should do in leadership of
the Negro race. These leaders tell us how good
Mr. So and So is, how many good friends we
have in the opposite race, and that if we leave
everything to them all will work out well.
The Negro has loved even under severest
punishment. In slavery the Negro loved his
master, he safe-guarded his home even when
he further planned to enslave him. We are not
a race of Haters, but Lovers of humanity's
Cause.
What do I care about death in the cause of the
redemption of Africa?...I could die anywhere
in the cause of liberty: A real man dies but
once; a coward dies a thousand times before
his real death. So we want you to realize that
life is not worth its salt except you can live it
for some purpose. And the noblest purpose for
which to live is the emancipation of a race and
the emancipation of posterity.
Lagging behind in the van of civilization will not
prove our higher abilities. Being subservient to the
will and caprice of progressive races will not prove
anything superior in us. Being satisfied to drink of
the dregs from the cup of human progress will not
demonstrate our fitness as a people to exist
alongside of others, but when of our own initiative
we strike out to build industries, governments, and
ultimately empires, then and only then will we as a
race prove to our Creator and to man in general
that we are fit to survive and capable of shaping
our own destiny.
Not all black men are willing to commit race
suicide and to abhor their race for the
companionship of another. There are hundreds
of millions of us black men who are proud of our
skins, and to us the African Empire will not be a
Utopia, neither will it be dangerous, nor fail to
serve our best interests, because we realize that,
like the leopard, we cannot change our skins,
and so long as black is black, and white is white,
the black man shall occupy a position of
inferiority depending upon the justice of the
great white race to lead and direct him. No race
in the world is so just as to give to others a
square deal in things economical, political,
social and otherwise.
Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work
towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed
and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star
among the constellation of nations.
Every man has a right to his own opinion. Every
race has a right to its own action; therefore let
no man persuade you against your will, let no
other race influence you against your own.
http://www.thegeniusofmarcusgarvey.com/philosophyopinion-quotes-of-marcus-garvey/
☻☻☻☻☻☻
-57- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Africa for the Africans
By Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Say! Africa for the Africans,
Like America for the Americans:
This the rallying cry for a nation,
Be it in peace or revolution.
Blacks are men, no longer cringing fools;
They demand a place, not like weak tools;
But among the world of nations great
They demand a free self-governing state.
Hurrah! Hurrah! Great Africa wakes;
She is calling her sons, and none forsakes,
But to colors of the nation runs,
Even though assailed by enemy guns.
Cry it loud, and shout it Ion' hurrah!
Time has changed, so hail! New Africa!
We are now awakened, rights to see:
We shall fight for dearest liberty.
Mighty kingdoms have been truly reared
On the bones of blackmen, facts declared;
History tells this awful, pungent truth,
Africa awakes to her rights forsooth.
Europe cries to Europeans, ho!
Asiatics claim Asia, so
Australia for Australians,
And Africa for the Africans.
Blackmen's hands have joined now together,
They will fight and brave all death's weather,
Motherland to save, and make her free,
Spreading joy for all to live and see.
None shall turn us back, in freedom's name,
We go marching like to men of fame
Who have given laws and codes to kings,
Sending evil flying on crippled wings.
Blackmen shall in groups reassemble,
Rich and poor and the great and humble:
Justice shall be their rallying cry,
When millions of soldiers pass us by.
Look for that day, coming, surely soon,
When the sons of Ham will show no coon
Could the mighty deeds of valor do
Which shall bring giants for peace to sue.
Hurrah! Hurrah! Better times are near;
Let us front the conflict and prepare;
Greet the world as soldiers, bravely true:
"Sunder not," Africa shouts to you.
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Every Race Has a Flag but
the Coon
"Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon" was a 1900
coon song written by Will A. Heelan and J. Fred Helf
that was popular in the U.S. and Britain. Coon songs
were a genre of music popular in the United States and
around the English-speaking world from 1880 to 1920
that presented a racist and stereotyped image of blacks.
The song was promoted as one of the greatest musical
hits of the day by A. M. Rothschild and Company in
1901. The tune is repeatedly referred to in the literature
as having the ability to incite violence merely by its
being whistled in the direction of an African American.
The song motivated the creation of the Pan-African flag
in 1920 by the members of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and African Communities
League. [6] In a 1921 report appearing in the Africa
Times and Orient Review, Marcus Garvey was quoted
as saying,
"Show me the race or the nation without a flag, and I
will show you a race of people without any pride. Aye!
In song and mimicry they have said, "Every race has a
flag but the coon." How true! Aye! But that was said of
us four years ago. They can't say it now...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Race_Has_a_Flag_but_t
he_Coon
☻☻☻☻☻☻
-58- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Garveyism not Continentalism is what Black
Africa Needs
By Chinweizu
1. Introduction
To avoid wasting anyone’s time, let me make clear who I
am not talking to, who I do not want to hear from, for as
Confucius said: “There is no point people taking counsel
together who follow different ways.” (Analects XV: 40)
My audience consists only of those Black Africans who
want the Black African people to survive. If you are a
black African, but don’t much care if the Black African
people survive or not, I have nothing to say to or discuss
with you. So, don’t read on.
Just go away.
But if you want the Black African people to survive, with
dignity and in security and prosperity, just like the white
or yellow peoples of this earth, then welcome! We have
vital matters to discuss.
2. The Cardinal Question
Since white Europeans began raiding Africa in the 15th
century for black captives to enslave; since white Arabs
invaded Egypt in 640 AD; and indeed ever since white
Persians conquered Black Egypt in 525 BC, the cardinal
question for Black Africans has been:
How can Black Africans organize to survive in the
world, and with security and respect?
That question has remained unaddressed for 25 centuries.
We must today face and answer it correctly for the
conditions of this 21st century or we perish.
The continentalist projects called OAU/AU/USAfrica are
false answers. Had they been named for Black Africa
rather than Africa, then as OBAU/BAU/USBAfrica, they
would have at least focused on the correct constituency,
the Black Africans.
Black Africans are now so confused that we have many
bright ones who reject even the partial solutions and
clamor for the false solutions. Some do so because they
are scared they would be accused of ‘black racism’ by
their racist liberal mentors among our white enemies.
3] The essence of Garveyism consisted of two
projects:
a] Black Governments:
Here is Garvey’s conclusion, a century ago,
after graveling in the Americas and Europe and
informing himself on the situation, world wide,
of Blacks [Negroes]:
I asked: “Where is the black man’s
Government?” “Where is his King and his
kingdom?” “Where is his President, his
country, and his ambassador, his army, his
navy, his men of big affairs?” I could not find
them, and then I declared, “I will help to make
them.” [P&O,II:126]
And he formed the UNIA to help do that.
b] A Black Superpower in Africa:
In the 1920s, Garvey diagnosed the global
prospect of the Blacks and prescribed the
remedy when he said: The Negro is dying out .
. . There is only one thing to save the Negro,
and that is an immediate realization of his own
responsibilities. Unfortunately we are the most
careless and indifferent people in the world!
We are shiftless and irresponsible . . . It is
strange to hear a Negro leader speak in this
strain, as the usual course is flattery, but I
would not flatter you to save my own life and
that of my own family. There is no value in
flattery. . . . Must I flatter you when I find all
other peoples preparing themselves for the
struggle to survive, and you still smiling,
eating, dancing, drinking and sleeping away
your time, as if yesterday were the beginning of
the age of pleasure? I would rather be dead than
be a member of your race without thought of
the morrow, for it portends evil to him that
thinketh not. Because I cannot flatter you I am
Continued on page 60
-59- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 59 – Garveyism not Continentalism is
what Black Africa Needs
here to tell, emphatically, that if we do not seriously
reorganize ourselves as a people and face the world with
a program of African [Negro] nationalism our days in
civilization are numbered, and it will be only a question
of time when the Negro will be as completely and
complacently dead as the North American Indian, or the
Australian Bushman. [P&O, II:101-102] . . .
This is the danger point. What will become of the Negro
in another five hundred years if he does not organize now
to develop and to protect himself? The answer is that he
will be exterminated for the purpose of making room for
the other races . . . [P&O, I:66]
[T]he Negro peoples of the world should concentrate
upon the object of building up for themselves a great
nation in Africa. . . [by] creating for ourselves [there]
a political superstate . . . a government, a nation of
our own, strong enough to lend protection to the
members of our race scattered all over the world, and
to compel the respect of the nations and races of the
earth. . . . [P&O, I:68,52; II:16; I:52]
Go ahead, Negroes, and organize yourselves! You are
serving your race and guaranteeing to posterity of our
own an existence which otherwise will be denied them.
Ignore the traps of persuasion, advice and alien
leadership. No one can be as true to you as you can be to
yourself. To suggest that there is no need for Negro
racial organization in a well-planned and arranged
civilization like that of the twentieth century is but to, by
the game of deception, lay the trap for the destruction of
a people whose knowledge of life is incomplete, owing
to their misunderstanding of man’s purpose in creation.
[P&O, II:16]
4] Continentalism
Continentalism is the doctrine and project of uniting the
entire continent of Africa, uniting all the races that now
live on it, black and white, Negro and Arab, preferably
under one government that will rule the entire continent.
This project has been going on since the 1958
Conference of Independent African States that was held
in Accra, Ghana. It produced the Afro-Arab OAU, then
the present Afro-Arab AU [Africa Unmanned/Arabist
Underwear], which is on the brink of transforming into
an Afro-Arab USofAfrica.
By the end of the 20th century, with the rise of blackruled
countries in Africa and the diaspora, Garvey’s first
project was realized, but only partly so, since these black
comprador governments remain fronts and agents for
white supremacy and White power and none has become
a Government of black people, by black people, and for
black people.
Moreover, none of these black-mask governments of
White Supremacy has dared to embark on the second
and vitally urgent Garvey project of creating a Black
African superpower that would be in the same power
rank as China and the G-8.
The dangers which Garvey pointed out in the 1920s are
still with the black race. If anything, they have been
intensified and augmented by such disasters as the
AIDSbombing of Black Africa by the USA and the
WHO; Arab expansionism and colonialism in the Afro-
Arab conflict zone that stretches from Mauritania to
Somalia, including the Afro-Arab war theatres in Chad,
Darfur and South Sudan; UN Imperialism which,
through the IMF, World Bank and WTO, has inflicted
Debt Trap Peonage, economic maldevelopment, and
deepening poverty on the Black countries of the world.
Black powerlessness continues without letup. And the
black extinction that Garvey alerted us to already is
underway, four centuries earlier than he warned. It is
going on through the AIDS bombing of Black Africa
by the USA and through Arab land grabs via ethnic
cleansing of Black African populations in Darfur,
Maurutania, etc.
Whereas Garveyism correctly focuses on our
developing the Black Power we need to defeat these
dangers and protect ourselves from all dangers;
Continentalism says nothing at all about Power, let
alone about Black Power. It doesn’t even offer to create
Black Unity. Its focus is on unification of the entire
continent, which translates into Afro-Arab unification.
Since the Arabs have, for nearly two thousand years,
been White invaders, exploiters and enslavers of Black
Africa, Afro-Arab unification is like a unification of
black lambs with white lions that eat lambs—a
unification whereby the lambs end up in the stomach of
the lions! The Arabs would naturally love, welcome
and eagerly promote such unification. But isn’t it
suicidal for the Black Africans to agree to it, let alone
campaign eagerly for it—as some have done for the last
50 years?
For that basic reason, Continentalism, with all its
projects –OAU/AU, USofAfrica, is the mortal enemy
of Black Africans.
Those Blacks who are deluded into thinking that Afro-
Arab unification would be good for Black Africans
would do well to find out just how rosy life has been
for those blacks who have lived under Arab colonialism
since the 1950s, and especially in Darfur and South
Continued on page 61
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Continued from page 60 – Garveyism not Continentalism is
what Black Africa Needs
Sudan, where the blacks have taken up armed struggle to
escape Arab colonialism and racism.
For accounts by black Africans of their life under Arab
colonialism go to the link:
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/chinweizu/usafri
ca-arabcolonialism-part-1-arab-quest-for-leben-2.html
and read Part II: Arab Colonialism in Black Africa
since 640AD
5] The Garveyite Black Survival Project
We do not need to politically integrate or federate all the
53 Arab and Black African neo-colonial states on the
African continent to produce a Black African superstate
that can protect all Black Africans wherever they are on
earth.
To implement the Garvey idea, what we need, above all,
is just one Black African country, big and industrialized
enough, and therefore powerful enough to be of G-8
rank, a country that could serve as the core state--
protector and leader—of Global Black Africa.
We also need a Black African League that shall be the
collective security organization of Global Black Africa,
our equivalent of NATO and the defunct Warsaw Pact.
These are the two things we need to implement in this
21st century to meet the Garvey requirement for Black
African survival.
For building a Black African superpower, as urged by
Garvey, an ECOWAS or SADC Federation, or some
equivalent in East or Central Africa is more than enough.
Just one of them, if integrated and industrialized by
2060, would meet the need.
ECOWAS or SADC is big enough in territorial size,
population and resource endowment to become an
industrialized world power provided its neo-colonial
character is eliminated.
Let us look at the numbers:
Country AREA in sq. km Population in 1993
ECOWAS 6.5m 185m
SADC 7m 130m
Brazil 8.5m 156m
USA 9.5m 256m
Russia 17.1m 148m
-61- Traditional African Clinic August 2012
India 3.3m 900m
China 9.6m 1.20b
EU 2.4m 350m
ECOWAS, with 16 states, 6.5m sq. km and nearly
200m population; or SADC, with 11states, 7m sq km
and some 130m population--would be a country of subcontinental
size, and in the megastate league, in
territory and population and resources, to which belong
the USA—with 9m sq. km and some 260m people;
Brazil—with 8.5m sq. km.
and 156m people; and Russia, India etc. ECOWAS or
SADC, if properly integrated, industrialized, and
thoroughly decolonized, would be a megastate of the
type Black Africa needs. So why don’t we get on with
the task of building each into a power of G-8 rank?
Why set off on the false, diversionary and dangerous
mission of Arab-Black African state integration of the
impotent neo-colonialist OAU/AU/USAfrica type?
Of course, ending their neo-colonial character is
anathema to the Black colonialists who now misrule the
Black African countries. These compradors would
rather set off on the quest for an unnecessary
USofAfrica that would still have the neo-colonial
character that suits the comprador interest and
temperament.
The second component of the Garvey project is to
replace the OAU/AU with a proper collective security
organization for Global Black Africa, an organization
to which the Black African Diaspora countries and
communities will rightfully belong.
It is one of the blemishes of Continentalist Pan-
Africanism that it is embodied, at the interstate level, in
an OAU/AU from which the Diaspora originators of
Pan Africanism have long been excluded whereas the
Arab enemies of Black Africa are, not only members,
but the dominant bloc. The Black African Diaspora are
only now being brought into the OAU/AU structures as
an afterthought and as no more than second-class
members. That is not how it should be.
The history of Black Africans demands that we replace
the Arab-castrated OAU/AU with a blacks-only
collective security organization, and not with yet
another Arab-castrated outfit called the USofAfrica.
Unless the members of a group are keen for their
group to survive, the group will most probably not
survive; for its members will fail to do what must be
Continued on page 62

Continued from page 61 – Garveyism not Continentalism is
what Black Africa Needs
done for their group to survive. And any such group
does not deserve to survive.
If Black Africans wish to survive, they must
profoundly change their priorities: Not slothful
consumerism here on earth, not paradise for their
souls in the hereafter, but collective security here on
earth must become their ruling passion.
Those Black Africans who are keen for the Black
African people to survive in the 21st century and beyond
will have to ensure that the Garvey Black survival
project is accomplished in the shortest possible time,
starting yesterday. They have two paramount tasks to
accomplish simultaneously: (1) They must, by all means
necessary, politically integrate, and complete the
abandoned decolonization of, ECOWAS and SADC, and
effect their exit from cargo cult maldevelopment by
industrializing them into powers of G-8 rank. (2) They
must build a Black African League that will organize the
collective security of the Black African World.
It should be pointed out that there is no mystery about
how a country industrializes itself. Meiji Japan in the
second half of the 19th century, industrialized itself
within 50 years and became a world power; Maoist
China, in the second half of the 20th century,
industrialized itself within 25 years and became a nuclear
weapons power; the Soviet Union, under Stalin in the
first half of the 20th century, industrialized itself in
precisely 10 years flat, and thereby was able to defeat
Hitler’s hordes when they invaded the Soviet Union in
1941.The prerequisite in each case was the leadership’s
determination to prevent their people from being
subjugated by the enemy at their gates, plus a realization
that to do that they had no choice but to transform their
country into a modern power through selfindustrialization.
If it has been done with such speed, then there is no
reason why Black Africans cannot integrate and
industrialize ECOWAS and SADC within 50 years, let’s
say by 2060, provided their leaderships understand and
accept the need to save their people from the mortal
danger posed by both the imperialist white European
powers and the expansionist Arab mini powers.
6. Black Power Pan Africanism (BPPA) is a neo-
Garveyite development of Pan Africanism for the 21st
century; it is focused on solving the dire problems of
Black Africans at home and abroad, by building, in
Black Africa, a black superpower of G-8 rank by 2060. It
will combat Arabism and Arab colonialism in Black
Africa as well as halt Arab expansionism into Black
Africa. It will wage a struggle, by all means necessary,
against all white power imperialisms and their black
comprador agents and agencies. BPPA will especially
struggle against Black Comprador Colonialism—that
black mask for white supremacy and white power in
Black Africa.
BPPA is political Afrocentrism in operation and it
aims, above all and by any means necessary, to stop the
extermination of the Black race which is now in
process. Black Power Pan Africanism (BPPA) is
different from and implacably opposed to
Continentalist [i.e. Afro-Arab] Pan Africanism which is
a disaster for Black Africa.
BPPA’s basic teachers are Marcus Garvey, Amilcar
Cabral and Steve Biko. In the task of solving the
problems of Black Africans in the 21st century, BPPA
will be guided by their ideas.
7. Black is beautiful?
Nigas say: "Black is beautiful!!"
Yes, like in black velvet or polished ebony.
But black skin?
That's a birthmark of incurable political
stupidity—
Well nigas, you think that's racist, don’t you?
And you feel insulted? Goooood!
But don’t just fume.
Take a good look at the historical record of the
last 2500 years!
And then get off your butts and prove me wrong
In the next fifty years
By not falling into the USofAfrica
—a trap set for you by Arab colonialism;
And by preventing yourselves from being
exterminated:
To be repeatedly defeated and enslaved and then
exterminated is not beautiful!
As the Chinese say: “Fool me once, shame on
you; fool me twice, shame on me”
Fool me a thousand times, and surely,
I am beyond shame, and deserve to be spat upon
by one and all.
--Chinweizu
Mar07
Continued on page 63
-62- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 62– Garveyism not Continentalism is
what Black Africa Needs
Note: When it comes to Black Race security and the
black power to assure it, Black Africans have been
obtuse for at least 25 centuries-- ever since the fall of
Black Egypt to white invaders in 525BC. And when, two
centuries ago, Shaka tried to do something about it in his
corner of Black Africa, look what his own family did—
assassinate him! None have tried since then. And now it
is almost too late!
Our total lack of a sense of our collective security,
and of the race war in particular, makes us like
somebody who is congenitally deaf—who is missing a
basic faculty. How can you get him to know what he is
missing, let alone the need to remedy the lack?
This security & power obtuseness is not beautiful; it
is deadly and ugly.
About the author:
Chinweizu is an institutionally unaffiliated Afrocentric
scholar. A historian and cultural critic, his books include:
The West and the Rest of Us (1975), Second, enlarged
edition (1987); Invocations and Admonitions (1986);
Decolonising the African Mind (1987); Voices from
Twentieth-century Africa (1988); Anatomy of Female
Power (1990). He is also a co-author of Towards the
Decolonization ofAfrican Literature (1980). His
pamphlets include The Black World and the
Nobel(1987); and Recolonization or Reparation? (1994)
He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Continued from page 38 – Ubuntu Philosophy as
an African Philosophy for Peace
same mistake, only on a larger scale. For the collectivist,
society is nothing but a bunch or collection of separately
existing, solitary (i.e. detached) individuals (Dirk, 1998).
This argument structures the fundamental philosophical
approach of Ubuntu. The “Cogito ergo sum” is not the
opposite of "Ubuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu", because the
Cartesian individuality finds its opponent in collectivism
whereby the individual vanishes and only becomes a part
of community without any strong relevance. The Ubuntu
individuality encompasses the centrality of individual but
with the framework of the society betterment. This may
be understood better with the following Dirk’s argument:
By contrast, Ubuntu defines the individual in terms of
his/her relationship with others. According to this
definition, individuals only exist in their relationships
with others, and as these relationships change, so do the
characters of the individuals. Thus understood, the
word "individual" signifies a plurality of personalities
corresponding to the multiplicity of relationships in
which the individual in question stands. […] This is all
somewhat boggling for the Cartesian mind, whose
conception of individuality now has to move from
solitary to solidarity, from independence to
interdependence, from individuality vis-à-vis
community to individuality à la community (Dirk,
1998).
In other words, Ubuntu goes far away from
collectivism or a pure Cartesian individuality. It starts
from the individual capacitation, promotion and selfcreativity
to his or her relation with the others. The
solitaire individual or the collective individual is
transformed in an individual filled with sense of
solidarity towards the community. In the western
approach, it would be a capitalist with human face or
rather a fully human being with elements of capitalism.
Having discussed about important dimensions of
Ubuntu concept, it is relevant to discover some of its
danger or limitations when one may take it for granted
in one way or another.
5. CRITICS ON UBUNTU
After understanding that this concept of Ubuntu has a
great foundation in the African culture or way of life,
one can raise certain questions. If it is so, why then a
society or a nation such as Rwanda, knowing the
Ubuntu thinking, would allow genocide to occur; why
are several tribal clashes and civil wars happening in
the land where supposedly Ubuntu understanding is
rooted? Is there any danger to romanticize the Ubuntu
thoughts so to even forget to deal in reality with the
root causes of certain conflicts? And many other
questions can come up to keep in mind that Ubuntu is
not the absolute approach to understanding the life of
human beings, but it has its share and contribution for
the peace culture.
Van Binsbergen discovers that Ubuntu runs the danger
of denying other possibilities of identification among
some Africans, as he argues:
But we hit here on a theoretical danger of Ubuntu. Use
of this term tempts us to deny all other possibilities of
identification between Southern African actors (i.e.,
fellow-citizens of the same state, fellow-inhabitants of
the same local space) except at the most abstract, most
comprehensive level of mankind as a whole: as fellow
human beings. It is as if in a gathering of humans one
appeals to the fundamental unity of all vertebrates, or
of all animate beings, instead of resorting to the lower,
relatively local, and obviously more effectively
Continued on page 67
-63- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
THE MARCUS-GARVEY PAN AFRICAN INSTITUTE /
UNIVERSITY (MPAI / MPAU) - A WORK IN PROGRESS
Professor Babuuzibwa Luutu
Executive Director (MPAI) and Vice Chancellor-designate (MPAU)
Mbale, Uganda, East Africa
Introduction
There is an enormous epistemological and cultural
gap in African higher education, learning and
research between African elites and the majority
of Africans, many of them marginalized by the
imposed political, economic and educational
systems.
The Marcus Garvey Pan-African Institute and its
off-shoot, the Marcus Garvey Pan African
University, were established precisely to draw
deeply on the cultural and civilization heritage of
African peoples and to work with them to
revitalize, reclaim and apply African indigenous
knowledge and wisdom systems for the
meaningful betterment of African peoples and
global humanity.
Why Pan-African, Why Marcus Garvey?
The university is designated as a ‘Pan-Afrikan’
institution in recognition of the continuing efforts
by Africa people to create an African nation
expressed in the need to establish the United
States of Africa.
However the concept of ‘pan-Africanism’ has
undergone several understandings followed by
different schools and ideological orientations.
Two understandings of Pan-Africanism stand out
in the course of the struggles for leadership of
Africans in the Diaspora: that propounded by the
African-American scholar W. W. Du Bois and the
African-Jamaican mass mobiliser, largely self-taught
Marcus Garvey. Du Bois advocated securing the right
of Africans to participate in governments in their
respective countries and later for self-rule. Garvey on
the other hand, advocated the uniting of all Africans
the world over, to establish a bridgehead on the
continent of Africa from which to fight colonialism
and weld the whole of Africa into a united nation.
The decision to name the University after Marcus
Garvey is a celebration of his devotion to making
African people not only self-governing but more
importantly as a united nation. Garvey believed in the
power of the ordinary people to organize themselves
into a powerful force, which could achieve African
regeneration. He advocated the need for Africans to
organize and not agonize and encouraged them to
educate themselves in every way, arguing that no one
had the monopoly of learning. His philosophy on
education can be summed up as follows:
“To be learned in all that is worthwhile knowing. Not
to be crammed with the subject matter of the book or
the philosophy of the class room, but to store away in
your head such facts as you need for the daily
application of life, so that you may (be) the better in
all things understanding your fellowmen, and
Continued on page 65
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Continued from page 64– MPAI/MPAU
interpret (of) your relationship to your Creator. You can
be educated in soul, vision and feeling, as well as in
mind. To see your enemy and know him is a part of the
complete education of man; to spiritually regulate one's
self is another form of the higher education that fits man
for a nobler place in life, and still, to approach your
brother by the feeling of your own humanity, is an
education that softens the ills of the world and makes us
kind indeed. Many a man was educated outside the
school room. It is something you let out, not completely
take in. You are part of it, for it is natural; it is dormant
simply because you will not develop it, but God creates
every man with it knowingly or unknowingly to him who
possesses it - that's the difference. Develop yours and
you become as great and full of knowledge as the other
fellow without even entering the classroom.”
Marcus Garvey’s philosophy and opinions are one of
rich heritages of the African people that have inspired
MPAU to provide the students, adult learners and the
communities with an interactive space both on campus
and CSoKs where they can learn, research, discuss and
expand on their existing knowledge and, with their
teachers and indigenous knowledge experts in the
community deepen it. Such a process will enable them
to carry out theoretical formulations and reflections in an
inter-disciplinary, plural-disciplinary and transdisciplinary
as well as comparative manner. The ultimate
objective will be to generate knowledge not only for its
own sake but for the sake of utilizing it in society by
doing and acting to transform their lives through
interaction with the wider world and humanity in the
process of African recovery and rebirth.
For a Pan-Afrikan University to emerge and set a new
path in the search for knowledge and truth it must first
and foremost be built on a sound cultural and spiritual
basis that highlights those aspects of African spiritual
life that have enabled the African people to survive as a
human community throughout the centuries. It should, as
Chancellor Williams, reminds us, go beyond European
classical humanism with its social class, socio-economic
and geographical limitations based on Greece and the
Athenian City-State, which was based on a system of
slavery. Pan-African humanism must, according to him,
lead to an “enlarged humanities” and recapture that
original meaning of humanity found in Africa, which
Western scholars, beginning with Plato, in their hollow
and lopsided search for material progress, abandoned.
To make a break with this past, the Pan-Afrikan
University must abandon the present African political
and economic elites’ mindsets, which have tended to
look at their village compatriots as ignorant and illiterate
people. In response, the African people in the villages
have also tended to look at these elites as ‘Mzungu
(European) minded.’ Hostility exists between the two
camps and there is no trust between them since
relationships between them is based on the colonial
system of Top-Down communication in which there is
very little dialogue and understanding between them.
This “Top-Down” approach also informs the
“development” strategies and programmes, which are
dictated by the external economic interests, which are
passed to the “ignorant masses” for implementation for
their betterment. The African elites have not played the
role as leaders of the African people in their socioeconomic
transformation. Rather they have been
operating a post-colonial State system. This has resulted
in a peculiar situation whereby the knowledge of the
principles and patterns of African civilisation have
remained with ordinary, ‘uncertificated’ men and
women, especially those in rural areas.
Historically, intellectuals of any civilisation have always
been the voices of that civilisation to the rest of the
world. But the tragedy of Africa, after conquest by the
West, is that her intellectuals, by and large, have
absconded and abdicated their role as developers,
minstrels and trumpeters of African civilisation resulting
in African civilisation stagnating.
What remained alive in the minds of languages of the
overwhelming majority of Africans remained
undeveloped because the ‘uncertificated Africans’ were
denied respect and opportunities for access to new forms
of knowledge. Consequently, they could not sing out,
articulate and develop the unique patterns of African
civilisation 1 in a rapidly changing world. The challenge
now is to move forward on a new beginning in which
the Pan-Afrikan University plays a galvanising role in
linking the African intellectuals to the African people
who exist in their ‘Sites of Knowledge and Wisdom’ so
that both can create a new relationship that can enable
them to reconstruct a new Africa.
THE MARCUS GARVEY PAN-AFRIKAN
UNIVERSITY-MPAU was established with the goal of
promoting a new kind of university, which can build on
the above experiences and in conformity with the need
of drawing on African knowledge heritage, create an
institution, which stands on “Two Pillars” with one
pillar in the communities as centres of research and
knowledge production, and the other pillar at the
University Campus where this knowledge will be
analysed, systemised, mainstreamed, and disseminated
to a wider global community. Continued on page 66
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Continued from page 65 – MPAI/MPAU
Therefore the vision of the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan
University is to link Afrikan communities as depositories
of African culture and knowledge with the University for
the Application of field and theoretical research
collaboration. MPAU will therefore be dedicated to the
epistemological rediscovery and research based on that
epistemology aimed at locating, promoting, managing
and developing of Afrikan knowledge and wisdom, so
that they can become part and parcel of the global
knowledge systems in the process of economic selfemancipation.
This is one of the inspirations MPAU wishes to draw as
one of the rich heritages of the African people in order to
provide the students, adult learners and the communities
with a space in which they can learn as well as carry out
research for analysis into dissertations and thesis, after
having interacted and been trained by their teachers,
community experts, and consultants at the University
Campus along the community knowledge sites. The
University will provide students with the facilities
necessary for expanding on their existing knowledge
and, with their teachers and indigenous knowledge
experts in the community expand on that knowledge.
Such a process will enable them to carry out theoretical
formulations and reflections in an inter-disciplinary,
plural-disciplinary and transdisciplinary manner as well
as comparative manner. The ultimate objective will be to
generate knowledge not only for its own sake but for the
sake of utilising it in society by doing and acting to
transform their lives through interaction with the wider
world and humanity in the process of African recovery
and rebirth.
Vision
MPAU will be linked to African communities as
depositories of African Culture and knowledge and will
be dedicated to the epistemological rediscovery,
relocation, promotion, management and development of
African indigenous knowledge and wisdom so they can
become part and parcel of the global knowledge systems
and recognized as such. Concerns will include but not be
limited to, indigenous agricultural, pastoral, fishing,
metallurgical, meteorological and medical knowledge,
historical and cultural accounts, cosmological and ethical
wisdom.
Mission
Based on this vision, MPAU will develop a structure of
knowledge, production, documentation and
dissemination that stands on two pillars namely the
Campus and Community sites of knowledge.
Objectives
(a) undertake research in areas of Afrikan
Knowledge and Wisdom and profile such knowledge
into a global research agenda
(b) recover the feminine principle and document
Afrikan Women’s knowledge from an African-cradle
perspective
(c) identify and strengthen community Sites of
Knowledge as one of the pillars of the University
(d) recruit researchers to undertake research on a
new epistemological basis with(in) Community Sites of
Knowledge and link them with other institutions of
higher learning so that their research findings can be
exposed to peer review and recognition
link some of the research activities to the university’s
own staff development and training programmes
(e) ensure that research findings are shared with the
communities from which the knowledge was derived
including documenting them in their respective
languages
(f) utilize the results of the research to develop
curricula and create a new epistemology that can
mainstream Afrikan Knowledge and Wisdom
(g) document all materials obtained through
research both at the Community Sites of Knowledge and
at the Institute so that libraries can be built both at
community levels and at the Institute
(h) in collaboration with other institutions, develop
ICT projects that can link rural communities to
institutions of higher learning, secondary schools,
primary schools, hospitals, spiritual and health centers
for purposes of e-learning and e-health for the rural
communities
(i) publish the results of the research in the form of
textbooks, monographs and booklets that can be used in
kindergartens, primary and secondary schools as well as
institutions of higher learning, so that these materials
can become the basis of developing both a school and
University system based on Afrikan Knowledge
Systems
(j) at some stage, through affiliations offer courses
on Afrikan indigenous knowledge and wisdom at
diploma or degree levels with the existing institutions of
higher learning in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa as
well as globally leading to joint degree awards
(k) build a new model of the restorative economy
based on research, innovation, learning and doing with
Continued on page 67
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Continued from page 66 – MPAI/MPAU
Community Sites Knowledge as sites of production and
exchange, and vice versa
(l) raise resources for self-sustainability of the
institution
(m) build up collaborations and partnerships with
other institutions both locally and globally in order to
promote the above objectives
(n) encourage and facilitate the use and
terminological development of native African languages
as media of instruction and intellectual discourse at all
levels
CORE PRINCIPLES OF MPAI-MPAU
MPAU stands by the following principles, which are
drawn from the African historical experience and
heritages, which Africans have achieved through
interactions with other communities throughout its
history:
• The principle of MAAT of balance and Connective
Justice;
• The principle of Restoration and harmony in the
community;
• The Principle that the African Community is
dynamic;
• The Principle of sovereignty,
democracy, and full participation;
• Principle of self reliance and interdependence;
• Principle of reciprocity and solidarity;
• The Principle of Honesty and Uprightedness; and
• The Principle of Transparency and Accountability
The new transdisciplinary approach is based on
Afrikology that removes strict boundaries between
academic disciplines. Such an approach aims to work
with rural and urban communities in the areas of
expertise they possess. To access their inherit
knowledge through research and teaching, and will
necessitate the creation of appropriate protocols that can
enable the Institute/University to establish an ethical
relationship between the Institute, the researchers and
the custodians of knowledge possessed by these
communities. This will imply the need to build organic
institutional relationships that enables the Sites of
knowledge to have access to resources through their
products as well as through institutional support
relationships with the Institute/University. This will
strengthen their capacities, including the building of
quality assurance, functional applied research that also
protects the intellectual property rights of the
communities. The themes would also require the
attraction of students and staff and their retention to this
new academic environment and the instilling of an
African patriotism and a Pan-African attitude.
References
Williams, C [1993]: The Rebirth of African Civilisation, Africa
World Press, Chicago.
IMF [2008]: Beyond Macroeconomic Stability: The Quest for
Industrialisation in Uganda, Staff Working Paper written by
Abebe Aemro Selassie (WP/08/231.
Shepperson, G [1960]: Journal of African History, Cambridge
University Press, Vol. 1 No. 2, 1960.
Thompson, V. B [1969]: Africa and Unity: The Evolution of
Pan-Africanism, Longman, London.
Garvey, M: Philosophy and Opinions.
Marcus Garvey Pan African University Profile
MPAU Strategic Plan 200-2014-Final Version
Edited by Nakato Lewis
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Continued from page 63 - Ubuntu Philosophy as
an African Philosophy for Peace
binding, category of humans; or as if one addresses the
members of one’s family appealing to their shared
identity, not as family members, but as fellow-nationals,
coreligionists, fellow-Africans, or any other category far
wider than the comfortably narrow scope of the family. It
is in short the perplexing and demobilizing choice of the
wrong level of aggregation (Van Binsbergen, 2002: 75).
Van Binsbergen’s understanding of Ubuntu tends to
reduce it to the collectivism, which, in fact, I have
demonstrated in the philosophical dimension is not a sort
of collectivism; but rather it is an individualistic
solidarity. Ubuntu calls on Africans to be true to the
legacy of their ancestral culture. It calls for a liberation of
Africans not so much from the colonizing gaze of others,
but from colonization per se, from the practice of
colonization, whether of Africans or by Africans.
CONCLUSION
New tendencies to understand Africa should deepen the
notion of looking at different cultural heritage from all
over the world and no longer the monolithic approach
based on the standards of only the West. The academia
would revisit certain approaches that are not necessarily
following the pattern of the rigorous scientific frame
Continued on page 68
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Continued from page 67- Ubuntu Philosophy as an African
Philosophy for Peace
works. It would encompass certain elements such
intuition, imagination, popular wisdom, proverbs and
other many ways of perceiving the reality from different
cultures. I looked at Ubuntu in its fundamental meaning.
This led to understand its religious aspect since it has
some elements that can be found in different
spiritualities of the world.
I went on looking at the political aspect and the
philosophical concept. It has been possible to understand
that the individual remains important in the Ubuntu
philosophy, but at the same time the individual’s
integration in the community is determinant.
I then recognized that Ubuntu is not the only way of
understanding life: it has its shortcomings especially if
one is not careful by romanticizing it and overlooking
the complexity of certain conflict realities. It has played
its role in the reconciliation process in the post-apartheid
period in South Africa, though it did not resolve all the
issues.
David Suze Manda is a PhD Candidate in International
Studies in Peace, Conflict, and Development.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BROODRYK, JOHANN (2006): “Ubuntu African life
coping skills: theory and practice”, in Recreation Linkages
between Theory and Praxis in Educational Leadership, the
Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and
Management (CCEAM) conference, South Africa Accessed on
6-11-2007
http://www.topkinisis.com/conference/CCEAM/wib/index/outli
ne/PDF/BROODRYK%20Johann.pdf
DIRK, J. LOUW (1998): “Ubuntu: An African Assessment of
the Religious Other”, The Paideia Archive, the Twentieth
World Congress of Philosophy, in Boston, Massachusetts from
August 10-15
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Afri/AfriLouw.htm Accessed
29-10-2007
MANDELA, NELSON (1994): A Long Walk to Freedom: The
Autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Little, Brown & Company,
Boston
NUSSBAUM, BARBARA (2003): “Ubuntu: Reflections of a
South African on Our Common Humanity”, in Reflections, the
Society for Organizational Learning and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vol.4, nº4, pp 21-26
VAN BINSBERGEN, W.M.J (2002): “Ubuntu and the
globalization of Southern African thought and society”, in
Boele Van Hensbroek, P (Ed), African Renaissance and
Ubuntu Philosophy, special issue of Quest: An African
Journal of Philosophy, 15, 1-2, 2001: pp 53-89
http://www.shikanda.net/publications/ASC-1239806-182.pdf
accessed on 06-11-2007
http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=20359
☻☻☻☻☻☻
A Billion Reasons to Believe
in Africa: A Rethink
By Dr. Mary Kinyanjui
Institute of Development Studies, University of Nairobi
“There are a billion reasons to believe in Africa,” states
Coca-Cola’s new commercial that attempts to capture the
spirit of “new” Africa.
Africa-optimism has in the recent past gained massive
hype. Ernst & Young in its May report on Africa’s
attractiveness for foreign direct investment (FDI) states
that "…There is a new story emerging about Africa; a
story of growth, progress, potential and profitability.”
According to the African Developmental Bank, "Africa
has started to see an economic resurgence" as a result of
stronger demand for its commodities from emerging
economies such as Brazil, China, India, and South
Africa. With the continent’s middle class clocking 313
million people, the region’s consumer spending has
increased. McKinsey Global Institute projects that
consumer spending in Africa will reach $1.4 trillion in
2020, from about $860 million in 2008. Over 616 million
people out of the 1 billion people that reside in Africa
have a cellular phone. The average African drinks about
8 liters of beer per year compared to about 70 liters on
average per year for Americans.
While the continent is bequeathed with flowery
endearments, it must guard against falling prey to the
“feel good” trap and ask fundamental questions. For
example, how are the endearments changing the lot
of Africa’s ordinary citizen? How is Africa changing for
the better? Is the renewed interest in Africa by emerging
and developed economies out to improve the continent's
socio-economic wellbeing? While Africa ought to
embrace the old and new suitors trooping to the
continent, this must be done with caution and on a winwin
basis.
What happened in Malawi ought to make Africans
rethink their celebration. As long as Malawi followed
donor dictates and allowed multinational companies to
out with donors and multinational companies, the
country’s food security was crippled. This begs the
question: who was driving Malawi’s food security?
Between Malawians and merchants of patented and reengineered
seeds and fertilizer manufacturers, who was
Continued on page 70
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African Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
Volume 7, Issue 9 NEWSLETTER August 2012
FEATURED ARTICLES
Ulogy for Marcus Garvey
President General William LaVan Sherrill
Kingston, Jamaica, November 4, 1956
The words spoken by President General William LaVan
Sherrill are as poignant and meaningful today in 2012 –
as in 1956. The “African” needs to re-affirm his
obligation to Self-Honor---and embrace Garvey’s
Philosophy as the only feasible guide to bring into
manifestation and ratification the establishment of “The
United States of Africa.”
The Honorable Marcus Mossiah Garvey and his
Historical Administration ratified the “Constitution of
the “Universal Negro Improvement Association and
African Communities League” in 1914. The Motto of the
organization’ is “One God, One Aim, One Destiny.”
The dream and Goal of the Organization is dedicated to
doing the work that will bring about the Freedom and
Redemption of Africa through the Philosophy of the
Honorable Marcus Mossiah Garvey. - Cleophas T.
Jacobs
Citizens of Jamaica, Greetings!
I am happy that it is my good fortune to visit this Island
of Jamaica, and the great City of Kingston. We have
been deeply impressed with your kindness and
hospitality, and the courtesies shown our delegation. We
congratulate you on the progress you are making in
commerce, industry and the great strides toward selfgovernment.
We bring with us the best wishes of Negro
America for success in your advance toward the goal of
Statehood.
We have come to Jamaica at the invitation of His
Worship, the Mayor, to share with you the
commemoration of a great Jamaican – Marcus Garvey.
One whose greatness and achievements extend far
beyond the boundaries of this island. Though he is a son
of Jamaica’s soil, he belongs, not alone to the people of
Jamaica, but to those millions of the world’s population
that struggle for freedom and independence in the United
States of America and Africa. He belongs not only to our
times, but to the ages. His memory is written, not alone
in bronze and stone standing in your Public Park, but in
the hearts of the world’s millions, who fight to
emancipate themselves from economic and political
bondage.
We commend you for the honor you give him today, yet
our hearts are grieved when we realize how little we
appreciated him in life. It appears however to be a
weakness of mankind that he never appreciates his great
benefactors at the time they serve and make their great
contributions. It is only after they have passed and time
gives us greater perspective, that we are able to evaluate
their work and greatness.
Garvey was indeed a great man. And, when we say great,
we are not simply making a play on words. His greatness
is proven by the standard which measure greatness.
Greatness is determined by the impact a man’s work and
teaching has on his times. When viewing the individual
and his work, we ask ourselves: Was the world different
because he lived? The answer to this question as it relates
to Marcus Garvey places him in the company of the
Great.
Because Garvey lived, Jamaica is different; Because
Garvey lived, Negro America is different; Because
Garvey lived, Africa is different. His work and teaching
gave birth to a New Negro, a New Africa and this impact
went a long way in shaping a New World. For his cry
was not alone, “Africa for the Africans,” “but Asia for
the Asiatic’” and “Europe for the Europeans.” He did
more to crystallize national sentiment in so-called
backward countries than any single individual of our
times. Measured by the standard of change Garvey and
his teachings have wrought in the world, Garvey rises to
the heights of greatness.
So great were the goals he set for his Race that small
minds criticized and little minds laughed, Laughed as
they always have at every new idea or venture. Some
called him a fool. Others branded him a charlatan and
Continued on page 70
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Continued from page 69- Ulogy for Marcus Garvey
buffoon; while the more charitable called him a dreamer.
Too blind and short-sighted to realize the possibility of
black men building for themselves, they sought to
belittle his work by terming it a dream. Little did they
realize that in calling Garvey a dreamer, they instantly
placed him in the ranks of the “Great.” Dreamer! Do you
know who dreamers are? They are the architects of
greatness. Their vision lies within their souls. They peer
through the clouds of doubt and darkness and pierce the
walls of unknown time.
Dreamers! They sail seas that have never been charted,
because they are the makers of the charts. They scale
mountains that have never been scaled, because they are
blazers of the way. They travel paths that have never
been beaten, because they are beaters of the paths.
Dreamers! The Great British Empire was first conceived
and given birth to by the mind of a dreamer. The Great
American Commonwealth was founded by dreamers; the
world reforms that now benefit mankind were born in
the hearts and minds of dreamers. Yes, Garvey was a
dreamer, and because he dared dream of an emancipated
Negro Race and Nationhood, Negroes of Jamaica are
marching, Negroes of America are marching and
Negroes of Africa are marching. The torch of freedom
has been lighted in their breasts and all the forces of hell
cannot blow it out.
We from America consider it a privilege and great honor
to participate with the people of Jamaica in paying
tribute to Marcus Garvey. His contribution to Negro
America was no less than he made to his Native land. I
wish it were possible for me to do justice to the greatness
of this son of Africa, but we cannot-words are
inadequate; bronze and stone too frail to convey a true
picture of the man. For Marcus Garvey was one of
history’s providential Geniuses. He came to his Race
endowed with an extraordinary ability for organization
and leadership, as Shakespeare had for poetry, Mozart
for music or Angelo for art. His undaunted faith in the
possibilities of his people; his courage to come forward
and plead their cause, under any condition and
circumstances, uniquely fitted him for leadership of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association - an
Organization which has been an eternal blessing to his
Race and given immortal fame to his name.
You, the people of Jamaica, knew him; you worked with
him; some of you fought with him; you knew his
strength and his weaknesses. But no man is perfect.
Whatever Garvey’s faults, whatever Garvey’s mistakes,
let us now cover them with the pure mantle of love and
tolerance for an otherwise great and noble character.
Nothing we say can add or take away from the stature of
Marcus Garvey. The world will soon forget what we say
today, but it will long remember what he did. His name
has a fixed place in history. As long as black men cherish
the ideals of freedom and independence, Marcus
Garvey’s name will live in the hearts of his people
everywhere. Great Garvey Day all.
By William LeVan Sherrill at the Unveiling of the Honorable
Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s Bust in Heroes Park, Kingston,
Jamaica, November 4, 1956
Eulogy Researched and presented by Mariama Kamau,
International Organizer of Universal Negro Improvement
Association and African Communities League (UNIA & ACL)
http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.p
hp?article=6762&magazine=400
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Continued from page 68 - A Billion Reasons to
Believe in Africa: A Rethink
benefitting most from the ‘success story’? Was this a
Malawi success story or a multinational company success
story?
As global optimism in Africa is hyped, Africa’s land is
being grabbed by ‘investors.’ Investors from China and
Europe are busy buying land in Kenya and putting up
'Chinese only' and 'European only' real estate. As elegant
edifices mushroom in Nairobi and its environs, where is
the revenue accrued heading? Won’t we wake up one day
and find ourselves legally landless and at the mercy of
the so called ‘investors’? What will happen twenty years
from now when our children find themselves
landless? Isn't this a prescription for a revolution and
civil war?
Saudi Arabian investors have reportedly paid $100
million for an Ethiopian farm. Uganda has sold 2 million
acres to Egypt. Kenya is leasing out 40,000 acres to
Qatar. China owns vast tracts of land in Zimbabwe and
Algeria. Madagascar was in the process of leasing out 1
million acres to South Korea. Millions of Africans
are dying from starvation as African governments lease
and sell millions of acres of land to feed populations
in China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Qatar
among others.
Africa is busy working on internet connectivity. In fact,
growth in Africa’s Internet and Broadband sector has
accelerated. By December 31 2011, Africa had
139,875,242 internet users and 37,739,380 people who
had subscribed to Facebook. As we consume this service,
Continued on page 71
-70- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 68 - A Billion Reasons to Believe in
Africa: A Rethink
do we ever question who is controlling the internet?
What would happen if the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which
basically holds the keys for any person or business
hoping to turn up in search results on the Internet, gave a
blackout to the continent? As more computers are
dumped into the continent, who is the ultimate
beneficiary?
Africa, a continent that carries 25% of the world’s
diseases is dependent on multinational ‘investors’ for
medical supplies. It imports around 70% of its
pharmaceutical needs from abroad. Two thirds of global
value of pharmaceutical products are produced in 5
countries; USA, Japan, France, Germany and UK.
In the banking sector, more than half of countries in
Africa have a banking market with either a dominant or
a significant share of foreign-owned financial
institutions.The continent spends more money servicing
its debt, in other words, paying interest to outsiders, than
it spends on infrastructural development.
On the natural resources front, none of the natural
resources Africa is blessed with is under African control.
While African countries like Nigeria, Angola,
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Libya, and
Equatorial Guinea among others possess oil in
abundance, they don't have the capacity to discover oil;
drill for the oil; refine the oil; transport the oil to the
destination where it would be refined; repair existing
refineries or have the vessel to transport the oil back to
Africa for consumption.
Africa should not celebrate the “...billion reasons to
believe in Africa” craze while the continent is owned
stock and barrel by other people. We cannot talk of a
thriving economy when we are mere consumers and
passive.
Before we celebrate Coke’s penetration to most parts of
Africa, we ought to ask why we are dying of preventable
and treatable diseases; why essential medicines cannot
be accessed in African households; why we don’t benefit
from our rich natural resources; why we are not in
control of our economies; why we are food insecure in
spite of a good climate; why it is easier to fly to other
continents but not our own; why intra-Africa exchange
of goods and services is low and why there is no African
homegrown brand that the world can celebrate.
http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.p
hp?article=6763&magazine=400
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Marcus Garvey in Jamaican
schools
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Monday July 30, 2012 –
Jamaican black consciousness pioneer and entrepreneur
Marcus Garvey will have a place of prominence in the
Jamaican school curriculum from this coming academic
year.
Education Minister, Reverend Ronald Thwaites, has
revealed that the teachings of Garveyism and the subject
of Civics will be officially introduced to the school
curriculum during the 2012/13 academic year.
He explained that the Garveyism programme will be
officially launched on August 17 at the Marcus Garvey
Technical High School in St. Ann.
“We will launch the material which will comprise the
module for Garvey studies as part of the Civics
programme,” he told journalists during a press briefing
recently at Jamaica House in Kingston.
Meanwhile, Thwaites said his ministry was pleased with
the level of progress being made in back-to-school
preparations for the upcoming school year, which begins
on September 3.
He said the ministry had so far, successfully hosted four
‘Back-to-School’ conferences in Regions Three, Four,
Five and Six over the last few weeks. The remaining two
conferences in Regions One and Two will be held in the
next three weeks.
The conferences encourage wide stakeholder
participation and give participants the opportunity to
have dialogue with the minister and other ministry
representatives.
Reverend Thwaites said he was pleased with the level of
participation in the conferences, which involved teachers,
principals, school board chairmen, parents, and even
members of the business and civic communities.
“The idea is to, not just go and tell them what’s
happening, but to listen to them and to engage them fully
in the enterprise of education, because the ministry and
the teachers can’t do it alone, it requires full
participation,” he said. The minister also advised that
quality education circle meetings are now being
organised for the completion of the School Improvement
Plans for each school.
http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/jamaica_news/
601068.html#axzz23igbrs7K
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-71- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

RIP: Celebrating the History,
Legacy and Future of Prof.
Nabudere’s Work
The Chemkengen Community Site of Knowledge, Trans Nzoia,
Kenya performing an eulogy in honor of Nabudere
March 16, 2012
The world remains as it was before the sad passing of
Prof. Nabudere except in two critical respects: he is no
longer present in person to help us understand it better
on the one hand, but he has left us with the means – if
we choose to use them to help change it for the better, on
the other.
Professor Nabudere succumbed to a hear attack on
November 9 th 2011 just one a half months short of his
79 th birthday. His political, intellectual and community
work spanned over half a century of pubic activism. He
was an inspiring speaker, indefatigable mobilize and
organizer and a prolific publisher. Key among his issues
of engagement were food security; peace; knowledge
solidarities; Africa’s contribution to humanizing the
world; life-long learning; cross-border solidarities;
international political economy; Pan-Africanism of
peoples; defence of the commoners; cognitive justice
and Community Sites of Knowledge and restorative
governance, economy and justice.
The communities, institutions, groups and networks that
Prof. Nabudere inspired, founded, led or brought together
can be found at all levels: local, sub-regional,
national, regional, cross-border, continental and
global.They range in type from ancestral clans and
minority groups to universities, donor agencies and
global solidarities. They came together for reasons of
mutual concern and/or shared commitment. Each sought
in its own way to respond to Nabudere’s call for com-
munity and popular-level engagement with tackling the
crisis of modernity, locally, across the globe (“glocally”).
They remain concerned that any solutions to the current
global problems and challenges should be designed and
driven in the interests of the majorities of the planet in
their various communities, and not powerful minorities
that precipitate or profit from the world’s increasingly
destructive recurrent economic, political and ecological
crises.
Prof. Nabudere’s legacy is yet to be fully quantified. His
development of the philosophical, intellectual and
academic basis of a Pan-African University standing on
the Campus and Community Sites of Knowledge is only
one of the currently visible parts of that legacy. Still in
the infancy, Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan University and
its associated institutions will gain immensely from a
renewed sense of impetus and commitment that a
conference of this kind is bound to impart. On the other
hand those long intrigued by Nabudere’s form of
community engagement will get a chance to experience
first hand how ordinary people have been inspired to set
up or strengthen their sites as centres of lifelong
learning, knowledge production and thought, innovation
and community enterprise.
The organic and essentially African nature of Nabudere’s
work, for the benefit of all humanity has also yet to be
fully appreciated and accepted. Africa, long seen as the
place where external ideas were taken as solutions to
African problems has now in Nabudere, a native son who
has reversed these centuries –old dynamics of thought
and action. Afrikology, the epistemology of the heart,
interfaces and wholeness is Africa’s contribution. How
Nabudere arrives at a point in his life’s journey to be able
to conceive, systematize and articulate it is a story that
cannot be separated from the story of his life’s jouney
itself, as a defender of people’s rights. There is therefore
a need to reflect on the details of that Journey. Another
of Nabudere’s acclaimed legacies, whose unfolding
concrete implications invite reflective discourse, was his
ability and drive to transgress epistemological-pedagogic,
spiritual-cosmological, methodological as well as the
colonially-crafted territorial and linguistic boundaries.
Nabudere, as a pan-Afrikanist immersed himself in
research and other activities in communities across
borders and encouraged these communities to link up
with their Diasporan counterparts. He was dedicated to
the promotion of Afrikan languages for intellectual
discourse at all levels. He worked to go beyond even
transdisciplinarity and reconnect with knowledge trapped
in the gaps between disciplines or foreclosed in the
communities. In the words of one South African don who
Continued on page 73
-72- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Continued from page 72– Celebrating the History, Legacy
and Future of Pro. Nabudere Work
was inspired by him, “Dani was a truly organic
intellectual and activist – it was impossible to see him in
any disciplinary pigeon hole. Every one of his papers
was profound in law, economics, political science,
physics, sociology, etc.”
Broadly, we can say that Africa, as with the world as a
whole, remains confronted by perhaps the largest
challenge to its viability to date, bordering on the Existentialist,
since the establishment of human
civilization. It is the responsibility of those most affected
to do the most to address this. Prof. Nabudere did more
than most and has left a great spiritual and knowledge
resource as his new form of living amongst us. We do
not see death as an end to existence, but as a change in
its nature. There a need to therefore work with the uture
of Prof. Nabudere in his new form as a legacy, author
and designer of a new way, brought from deep in the
African cradle of civilization to address contemporary
human challenges.
A memorial conference honoring Professor Nabudere was
held in Kampala, Uganda on March 16-17, 2012. It was
attended by the community sites of knowledge, people
reconciliation groups, civil societies, media and academia.
We will do a special edition of the newsletter in November, the
first anniversary of his death, which will be dedicated to some
aspect of his work in the grassroots communities
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Collectivism not Colonialism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, religious,
economic, or social outlook that emphasizes the
interdependence of all, or some group of, human beings.
Collectivism is a basic cultural element that exists as the
reverse of individualism in human nature and stresses
the priority of group goals over individual goals and the
importance of cohesion within social groups.
Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or
nation.
Marcus Garvey is one of our modern day heroes, He
believed in unity of the race, racial pride, collective
economic security and self-sufficiency. Along these
lines, he gave us something to believe in, to hold on to
when many of us at that time (post-slavery) lacked hope.
He was the first to really show us how great the mighty
race we once were. Many of our later black leaders took
their cue from Marcus Garvey. He was a threat to the
powers that be and like so many of our legitimate
leaders, opposition came not just from the former slave
owners but from our traitorous black brothers as well.
We have Dani Wadada Nabudere, a Ugandan hero, a Pan-
African(ist), inspired by Marcus Garvey and a believer in
his principles. Like Garvey, he was a prolific writer and
author. Like Garvey he believed in Africa and the right of
all Africans to self-determination. Like Garvey, he
believed that we must determine our own destiny and like
Garvey he spent time in prison for his beliefs. Prof.
Nabudere’s forte was in educating Africans in their
history, language and culture because he considered this
the way forward, by re-educating ourselves to African
ways of thinking and doing. The African race was around
before any others. Our knowledge is hidden in language
and in culture. Our ways of knowing rests with the rural
people who never learned European ways. Prof. Nabudere
is the founder of the Marcus-Garvey Pan African
Institute/University and the first chancellor. The
University was established to unlock those secrets using
Afrikology, the history of Africa (law, science, agriculture,
medicine etc.), developed in Africa, for Africans,
by Africans. We are proud to say our small organization
at the African Traditional Herbal Research Centre is a
designated community site of knowledge with the Marcus
Garvey University in the science of African Traditional
Herbal Medicine.
We are both Pan-Africans born in Jamaica and in the U.S,
respectively. We had the honor and privilege of knowing
Professor Nabudere, not only as a friend and partner, but
also as a mentor. He was the embodiment of a strong,
moral, dignified, learned and self-taught African man you
could only hope to meet in your lifetime, one that believed
in Marcus Garvey and Pan-Africanism the way we do, not
just as a political entity but as a economical and
humanistic entity as well. Garvey never reached Africa
and Nabudere never reached the US or Jamaica.
We should take a note from Marcus Garvey. It’s been a
long time since we have come together on an issue or to
build something substantial. The University needs our
help. It needs our support, if it is going to work at all. We
need to pitch in and make this a reality. How can we help?
If we could give one dollar, 1 thousand shillings, 1 pound
or one euro, it can happen. If you agree, send us an email
at clinic@blackherbals.com. Let’s get something started.
Nakato & Kiwanuka Lewis
Blackherbals – A Marcus Garvey Pan-African
University Community Site of Knowledge
-73- Traditional African Clinic August 2012

Mission Statement
Our aim at The African Traditional Herbal
Research Clinic is to propagate and promote the
awareness in Afrikan peoples at home and abroad of
their health, biodiversity, history and cultural
richness. We gather pertinent information on these
issues and disseminate these freely to our people in
Uganda, the rest of the continent, and anywhere in
the Diaspora where Afrikans are located…. One of
the main ingredients for increasing poverty, sickness,
exploitation and domination is ignorance of one's
self, and the environment in which we live.
Knowledge is power and the forces that control our
lives don't want to lose control, so they won't stop at
anything to keep certain knowledge from the people.
Therefore, we are expecting a fight and opposition to
our mission. However, we will endeavor to carry
forward this work in grace and perfect ways.
“Where there is no God, there is no culture.
Where there is no culture, there is no
indigenous knowledge. Where there is no
indigenous knowledge, there is no history.
Where there is no history, there is no science
or technology. The existing nature is made
by our past. Let us protect and conserve our
indigenous knowledge.”
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C ALENDAR OF E VENTS
SPECIAL EVENT: CLINIC OPENING
PLACE: AFRIKAN TRADITIONAL HERBAL RESEARCH CLINIC
TIME:
Afrikan Traditional Herbal Research Clinic
54 Muwafu Road, P.O. Box 29974
Ntinda, Kampala, Uganda East Africa
Phone: +256 (0) 702 414 530
Email: clinic@blackherbals.com
Independence, Uganda @ 50 -9 October 1962-2012
Independence, Jamaica @ 50 - 6 August 1962-2012
☻☻☻☻☻☻
In Celebration of 125 th Birthday of Marcus
Mosiah Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Pan-Africanist
“Gradually we are approaching the time when the
African peoples of the world will have either to
consciously through their own organization go forward
to the point of destiny as laid out by themselves, or must
sit quiescently and see themselves pushed back into the
mire of economic serfdom, to be ultimately crushed by
the grinding mill of exploitation and to be exterminated
ultimately by the strong hand of prejudice.”
☻☻☻☻☻☻
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-74- Traditional African Clinic August 2012