To be African is to be human (I am an African)

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminders embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

Image: Source A depiction of a slave ship being loaded off West Africa.

I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune led, the patriots that Cetshwayo and Mphephu took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.

Image: Wikipedia - **Sekhukhune I** was the paramount King of the Marota, more commonly known as the Bapedi (Pedi people), from 21 September 1861 until his assassination on 13 August 1882 by his rival and half-brother, Mampuru II.

My mind and my knowledge of myself is formed by the victories that are the jewels in our African crown, the victories we earned from Isandhlwana to Khartoum, as Ethiopians and as the Ashanti of Ghana, as the Berbers of the desert.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind’s eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk, death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.

I am the child of Nongqause. I am he who made it possible to trade in the world markets in diamonds, in gold, in the same food for which my stomach yearns. I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.

Image: Wikipedia - Nongqawuse was a Xhosa prophet. Her prophecies led to a millenarian movement that culminated in the Xhosa cattle-killing movement and famine of 1856–1857, in what is now Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that - I am an African!

Image: Wikipedia - The Bassa people are a West African ethnic group primarily native to Liberia.

I am born of the peoples of the continent of Africa. The pain of the violent conflict that the peoples of Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, Burundi and Algeria is a pain I also bear. The dismal shame of poverty, suffering and human degradation of my continent is a blight that we share.

- Thabo Mbeki

Who is an African, what constitutes as African or what makes one an African? Not the color of their skin and definitely not the citizenship? What characterized as an African identity?

The Editor