Land is ancestral in the Being of the African people, and therefore any disturbance to the relation between the land and the Africans will result in them losing their Being (or self) - becoming pariahs in their ancestral land. This made them a conquered people and empty shells that accepted everything coming their way.
With the land Africans knew who they were, had a good relationship with their ancestors. Africans are closely rooted in their land, their identity is rooted in the land, their Being (existence) is rooted in the land. Therefore, as a result of land dispossession and the idea of Europeanizing non- European territories like South Africa, the Africans were stripped of their African self, which was understood as being within the land or together with the land. Land dispossession made it possible for the colonisers to conquer the Being of Africans through reason and religion.
It was only possible after land dispossession, which left Africans in a state of being defeated, that colonisers managed to impose the idea that colonisers possessed rationality and souls that are ordained by God, and thus are special Beings or full human Beings. Reason was used together with religion to prove who was human and who was not. This was done through convincing themselves (the colonisers) given the influence of some historical backgrounds (e.g. the Greek background) that those who can rationalise or who possess (rationality) reason, are free or noble men and thus full human Beings (contrary to those who lack rationality/reason but look like human Beings). This was also done through convincing themselves (the colonisers) − given their religious background – that they possess a soul that is ordained by God, contrary to those (the conquered) whose soul was either not ordained by God or by a wrong God.
Tshepo Lephakga
For the Africanists the struggle is both nationalist and democratic, in that it involves a restoration of the land to its rightful owners - the Africans - which fact immediately divides the combatants into the conquered and the conqueror, the invaded and the invader, the dispossessed and dispossessor. That is a national struggle. It has nothing to do with numbers and laws. It is a fact of history. And both sides are each held together by a common history and are, in the struggle, carrying out the task imposed by history. That task is, for the whites, the maintenance and retention of the spoils passed on to them by their forefathers and, for the Africans, the overthrow of the foreign yoke and the reclamation of 'the land of our fathers.
Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC)’s slogan "The Land First and All Shall Follow" was very spiritual and I think it was the foundation to return to who we are. What are your thoughts!
Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology University of South Africa. [email protected]
