T
THE AFRIKAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika
Maluphakanyisw' uphondo lwayo
Yizwa imathandazo yethu
Nkosi Sikelela
Thina lusapho lwayo
E. Sontonga, 1897.
THE BLACK NATIONAL ANTHEM
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.
James Weldon Johnson, 1900
AFRIKAN PROVERBS
African proverbs are a source of great wisdom. Many are centuries-old philosophies distilled into a short sentence or two. Their character and posture are as indicative of the African personality as any other aspects of our culture. Here are a few useful
links:
3. The Minds Journal
4. Wow For You
"Look for me in the whirlwind or in the storm.
The greatest possession of man is character.
Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden.
Do not remove the kinks from your hair; remove them from your brain.
Up you mighty race, accomplish what you will!"
Marcus PanAfrikanus Garvey
"To control a people you must control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and history he needs no prison walls and chains to hold you."
John Hendrick Clark
"Your brain is your greatest weapon. Connect it to your heart and you can go anywhere.
You have to stand for something or you'll fall for everything.
The richness of Afrika, culturally is vast!
Your color doesn't define your brain nor your soul. ..... The world is yours, embrace it."
Angelique Kidjo
"There are three things I was born with in this world, and there are three things I will have until the day I die - hope, determination and song.
Afrika has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.
I do not sing politics. I merely sing the truth.
Your words should be constructive; bring people together, not pull them apart."
Miriam Makeba
A race of people is like an individual man. Until we use our own talents, take pride in our own history, express our own culture, affirm our own selfhood, we can never fulfill ourselves.
Malcolm X
"Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation is out of breath. We ain't running no more.
The first need of a free people is to define their own terms.
There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience.
If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem.
What we gonna start saying now is Black Power.
If your people are oppressed and you are not making a contribution to end their suffering; by your very act of inaction you are against your people. There is no middle ground.
Black is beautiful........Go home and tell your daughters they are beautiful."
Kwame Toure
"We prefer self government with danger over servitude with tranquility.
The best way to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state.
We face neither east nor west: we face forward.
Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.
I am not Afrikan because I was born in Afrika, but because Afrika was born in me.
The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart."
Kwame Nkrumah
"For a colonized people the most important value, because the most concrete, is the land: the land which will bring them bread and , above all, dignity.
When we revolt it's not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.
Wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected robbery.
Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.
A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later, a people get the government they deserve.
What matters is not to know the world but to change it.
The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.
The negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority, alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation."
Frantz Fanon
"Afrika can and will only advance through Afrikan integration, which can be realized through the Federal United States of Afrika.
Ancient Egypt was a negro civilization. The history of Black Afrika will remain suspended in air, and cannot be written correctly, until Afrikan historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt.
When we say that the ancestors of Blacks were the first to invent mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, science in general, arts, religion, agriculture, social organization, medicine, writing, technique, architecture; ... we are merely expressing the plain unvarnished truth, that no one today can refute by arguments worthy of the name.
Humanity's moral conscience progresses slowly yet surely."
Cheika Anta Diop
"A wise person speaks carefully and with truth, for every word that passes between one's teeth is meant for something.
There are two things over which you have complete domination, authority and control - your mind and your mouth.
What could be more correct for any people than to see with their own eyes?
The person who strays away from the source is uprooted and is like dust blown about by the wind.
Your power is in your faith - keep it and pass it on to other bloods."
Molefi Kete Asante
"Some people try deliberately to exploit the colonial hangover for their own purpose; to serve an external force. To us, communism is as bad as imperialism.
When the missionaries arrived, the Afrikans had the land and the missionaries had the bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the bible.
Our children may learn about heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves architects of the future.
To all the dispossessed youth of Afrika: for the perpetuation of communication with Ancestral Spirits through the fight for Afrikan freedom, and for the firm faith that the dead, the living and the unborn will unite to rebuild the destroyed shrines."
Jomo Kenyatta
A HANDFUL OF GEMS
6. J. A. Rogers
LINKS TO FURTHER INSPIRATION
10.
Inspiration
AFRIKAN HERITAGE UNIVERSE
Be norished: feed on the wisdom of our ancestors
"Think globally, act appropriately."
JS Demba
"We face neither east nor west: we face forward."
Kwame Nkrumah
"Our people are our greatest resource; we must never forget this."
Mia Mottley
"The rescue of Mother Afrika from the clutches of all those who have been, and continue to be, dependent on her human & material resources for their own prosperity, must mean the granting of independence to all those infernal leeches and the re-generation of our unique civilization."
JS Demba
"Education is the key to unlocking the world; a passport to freedom."
Oprah Winfrey
"Black Power is the recognition that power can bring about more changes than an appeal to a man's conscience. It is a concept of Black consciousness, the need to assert that Blacks can make decisions for themselves."
Rocky Jones
"A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"
Ancestors' proverb
"Never stop believing in the power of your ideas / imagination / hard work to change the world."
Barack Obama
"I am Stephanie Lahart! an intelligent, empowered and confident Black Queen. Purposefully fearless."
Stephanie Lahart
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!"
Ancestors' proverb
"Relaxing' your hair / you are / always battling to do what / God didn't mean it to do."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"If you and a fool have an argument, he succeeds."
Ancestors' proverb
"A minimum of comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue."
Patrice Lumumba
"It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change."
Miles Davis
"We appear tall because we stand on the shoulders of many ancestors."
Ancestors' proverb
"IRONY ..They invite you to come view artifacts stolen from your Ancestors (and imprisoned in their museums) as their 'experts' explain your ancient Benin Kingdom."
Ijeoma Umebinyuo
"Third world is a state of the mind and until we change our attitude as Afrikans, if there is a fourth, fifth and even sixth world, we will be in it."
PLO Lumumba
"Walk softly but carry a big stick; you will go far."
Ancestors' proverb
(adjusted & popularized by T. Roosevelt)
"Afrikans, you are the only people who can liberate your citizens from poverty through (Africentric) education."
Lailah Gifty Akita
"Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery."
Miles Davis
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
Ancestors' proverb
"Ain't nothing but a hound dog."
Big Mama Thornton
(appropriated by Elvis Presley)
"Tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."
Ancestors' proverb
"Up you mighty race, accomplish what you will!"
Marcus PanAfricanus Garvey
"I often worry about the safety of my children, especially the one that is rolling their eyes at me and talking back right now."
Sent in by a wise mother
"Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter."
Ancestors' proverb
"Prosperity, wise; development, foolish!"
JS Demba
"One who causes others misfortune also teaches them wisdom."
Ancestors' proverb
"Afrika can and will only advance through Africkn integration, which can be realized through the Federal United States of Afrika."
Cheika Anta Diop
"Only the shoulders of our own Ancestors can carry us through thick and thin, for they were designed especially for us."
JS Demba
"The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to anyone of us anywhere in the world, had better be the business of all of us."
Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley
(Mother of Emmett Till)
"I took up arms for the freedom of my color. It is our own; we will defend it or perish.
I have taken my flight in the region of eagles. When I alight, it must be on a rock.
It is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it is the adoption absolute of the principle that no man, born red, black or white, can be the property of another man."
Toussaint Louverture
"By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?"
Walter Rodney
"Little girl, little boy,
with the cornrowed hair
let me see your pretty face,
let me see your handsome smile"
"You have to be real, responsible and love your people"
Na Nana Camille Yarbrough
"Sometimes force is 'necessary' to exterminate the wicked customs of those who do not use reason and do not understand any argument without punishment."
Queen Nzinga
"On this land, we eat fire."
Shaka, King of the Zulus
"Yes We Can!"
Barack Obama
YOUTH INSPIRING YOUTH
(and some adults too)
News Views & Clues
001
Asking me to change my hair is like telling me to erase my blackness."
Zulaikha Patel
South Afrikan Student Activist
002
Move over Silicon Valley
Verone Mankou
Creator of first Afrikan-made Mobile Phone
003
Thank you Thato. Mom's stop worring about my safety and my grades have gone way up.
Thato Kgatihanye
Creator of Repurpose Schoolbags
004
Thanks for making Beyonce look so good.
Sarah Diouf
Tongoro Fashion Creator
005
"One of the truly inspiring young female engineers shaping our world"
Dr, Ozak Esu
Specialist in Sustainable Engineering
006
Salvation at last: THE SONGHAI PROGRAM!
Dr. Geofrey Nzamujo
LINKS TO FURTHER INSPIRATION (Contd)
20.
Let us each give of our talents, our energy and our resources for the betterment of Afrika and all her children.
Let us all commit to work together for our global prosperity and that of Afrika, our ancestral homeland.
Zumbi dos Palmares
Freedom Fighter. Founder of Palmares.
Marcus PanAfrikanus Garvey
Arch PanAfricanist. Founder of the UNIA.
Queen Nzinga
Courageous ruler. Resolute defender of her Kingdom against enslavement.
The Mighty Mirambo
Fighter against slavery. Master tactician.
Osagifo Kwame Nkrumah
Arch PanAfricanist. Father of Afrikan unity.
Queen Nanny
Freedom fighter. Military strategist. National hero.
Patrice Lumumba
Gave his life for Afrikan freedom & dignity.
Kwame Toure
Passionate promoter of Afrikan power, beauty & self-determination.
King Shaka the Great
Superb military strategist. Founder of the Zulu nation.
Toussaint Louverture
Conquering general. Igniter of torch for global African liberty.
Imhotep
Architect, Royal Counsellor, Author. Father of Modern Medicine.
Double click here to add text.
Walter Rodney
African intellectual, author, politician and emancipator.
CLR James
Intellectual, historian, author. Defender of African entitlement to
self-determination
Double click here to add text.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere
Teacher. First president of Tanzania. Promoter of African Union.
Emperor Haile Selassie
House of Solomon. Rastafari Messiah.
Zulaikha Patel
South African Student Activist.
Inspirational defender of God's image in us.
Long may she present & represent.
ENJOY BELIEVE INVEST!
we need your ideas, your volunteering time or your financial support
PAGE EPILOGUE: In God's Image
"Bottom Line: God, in His infinite wisdom, chose to make us in his own Image and infuse us with his infinite love. This is all the inspiration we need. Failure to take our cue from God, embrace ourselves and love ourselves unconditionally; preferring instead to allow others to remake us in their own images, all the while enslaving us & colonizing us & 'developing' us, is sinful, sacrilegious and downright stupid. We should be better than that! We are better than that!: Bottom Line." JS Demba
