THE IMPORTANCE OF NARRATIVES AND CULTURAL HOLIDAYS: BALANTA MAN VS. HALLOWEEN

Balanta Man.jpg

In an interview on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, Bryan Stevenson expertly explained the significance of “narratives”:

“There are narratives that actually shape the way we think. . . . Stories . . . but ideas, values . . . . for example, in the 1970’s and 80’s [America] declared a misguided war on drugs. [America] said that the people who are drug addicted and drug dependent are criminals and we need our criminal justice system to respond to that crisis. We could have said that people with addiction and dependency have a health problem and we need our health care system to respond to that. The reason why [America] made the crime choice was because we were being governed by what I call the politics of fear and anger. It was a NARRATIVE that we had to be tough on crime. That people who don’t do exactly what we want them to do are criminals and we use that narrative to justify these extreme punishments and I think we have to change that narrative because I think fear and anger are the essential ingredients of oppression and injustice. If you go anywhere in the world where people are abused or oppressed, the oppressors will give you a narrative of fear and anger.”

Nixon Declaring War on Drugs.JPG

It was the narrative that facilitated what Michelle Alexander called The New Jim Crow enslavement of a generation of black people in America. The narrative was the ideological foundation that enabled a massive transfer of wealth from predominantly black Americans to white Americans.

Drug stats 6.jpeg

In addition to the disproportionate mass incarceration of black people, the drug war devastated the social and economic development in those communities for decades. Young black men in particular were criminalized for the buying and selling of weed to support their families and communities when few employment alternatives were available. Taxpayers’ money armed the police force which was used as a terroristic occupying army in black communities. According to Alexander’s reserach, “more black men are behind bars or under the watch of the criminal justice system than there were enslaved in 1850.” However, marijuana reform law now says that the same activity that made young black men criminals is now “legal” and the economic benefits are staggering. According to the Investopedia Government & Policy 2020 Election Guide,

“Better than expected sales of marijuana in Colorado and Washington over the past several years have resulted in buoyant tax revenues. In 2015, Colorado collected more than $135 million in taxes and fees on medical and recreational marijuana. Sales in the state totaled over $996 million. Sales in North America grew 30%, to $6.7 billion, in 2016, and is projected to increase to $20.1 billion by 2021, according to Arcview Market Research. Local research supports this view as well; a report from the Colorado State University-Pueblo's Institute of Cannabis Research recently found that the legal cannabis industry has contributed more than $58 million to the local economy, primarily through taxes and other fees. Should marijuana become legal on a federal level, the benefits to the economy could be exceptional: a report from cannabis analytics company New Frontier suggests that federally legal pot could generate an additional $131.8 billion in aggregate federal tax revenue by 2025.”

Now consider that the number of black farmers in America peaked in 1920, when there were 949,889. Today, of the country’s 3.4 million total farmers, only 1.3%, or 45,508, are black, according to new figures from the US Department of Agriculture released this month. They own a mere 0.52% of America’s farmland. By comparison, 95% of US farmers are white. The land theft and wealth transfer from black farmers in America to white farmers in America means that black people are not in a position to benefit from growing marijuana legal. In addition, access to capital and loans to buy land and build processing and distribution centers means that the entire financial system that was created to serve the original white monopoly capitalists that formed the state governments as well as The United States of America will be the biggest beneficiary of the new transfer of wealth from black people to white people.

Meanwhile, the narrative about drug use has now changed exactly from “the people who are drug addicted and drug dependent are criminals and we need our criminal justice system to respond to that crisis” to “people with addiction and dependency have a health problem and we need our health care system to respond to that.” This is because, marijuana is less considered a drug, but heroin and opiods are considered drugs. And the biggest users and opiod drug addicts are overwhelmingly white. Thus, it is now politically acceptable to change the narrative about drug addicts in order to transfer wealth into servicing the health needs of white people and the priorities of the original monopoly capitalists that formed the state governments and the United States of America.

This is a very clear and specific example of the significance of NARRATIVES.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BALANTA PEOPLE AND CULTURAL HOLIDAYS?

Holidays serve as signifiers and symbols of national and cultural narratives. It engages, or attempts to engage, all of society in the acceptance and performance of a cultural narrative. For example, the 4th of July or “Independence Day” is a national holiday to celebrate the official narrative that a group of militia men whom are referred to as “patriots” were courageous freedom fighters who defended themselves against the tyranny of England and eventually, through a just war, established a new government and nation built on the principles of freedom and liberty for all people. That’s the narrative that is commemorated every 4th of July.

However, this narrative has always been challenged. According to Samuel Johnson’s seminal English Dictionary published at the time, the word "patriot" had a negative connotation and was used as a negative epithet for "a factious disturber of the government". An alternative narrative claims that the followers of a group called The Sons of Liberty were traitors and terrorists who engaged in criminal action against British troops (police) when they attacked them and attempted to defy the legally constituted authority at the time.

what do american celebrate on the 4thof july.jpg

The most famous, and perhaps the greatest, expression of an alternative narrative of America’s Independence Day holiday was given in 1841 by Frederick Douglass, who asked, “What to the slave, is the 4th of July?”

“Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? . . . .I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people. . . .

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth"! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. . . . Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America!”

FOUNDING fathers2.gif
1776 hypocrisy.jpg

SO LET US NOW CONSIDER THE SPECIFIC NARRATIVE EUROPEANS USED AGAINST BALANTA

1433 Romanus pontifex, the first in a series of papal bulls issued during the fifteenth century that regulated Christian expansion, sanctioned the Infante’s request and Portugal’s alleged mission in Guinea since ‘we strive for those things that may destroy the errors and wickedness of the infidels’.

1506 Earliest account of the Balantas in written records, Valentim Fernandes, Descripcam, “There was very little stratification in Balanta society. Everyone worked in the fields, with no ruling class or families managing to exclude themselves from daily labor.”  

1594 Andre Alvares Almada, Trato breve dos rios de Guine, trans. P.E.H. Hair - “The Creek of the Balantas penetrates inland at the furthest point of the land of the Buramos [Brame]. The Balantas are fairly savage blacks.”

1615, Manuel Alvares commented, “They [Balantas] have no principle king. Whoever has more power is king, and every quarter of a league there are many of this kind.” and “They are all great thieves, and they tunnel their way into pounds to steal the cattle. They excel at making assaults . . . taking everything they can find and capturing as many persons as possible.”

1627 Alonso de Sandoval wrote that “Balanta were ‘a cruel people, [a] race without a king.”

1684 Francisco de Lemos Coelho says that “much of the territory of the Balanta ‘has not been navigated, nor does it have kings of consideration.’”

Late seventeenth century, Capuchins noted that ‘Balanta and the Falup’ cause notable damages and seize every day the vessels that pass by . . . and this even though the vessels are well armed.’

After constructing the narrative that the Balanta were “savage”, and “cruel” and later, that their “souls needed to be saved”, and creating a “legal” system (but not “lawful”) that replaced natural law with a new, man-made fictitious “corporate” or “statutory” law that made it “legal” to enslave the people in the land of “Guinea” , the Europeans, led by Portugal and then England, proceeded to send the most vicious of men to kidnap and capture Balanta men, women and children. The firsthand early accounts of these raids are documented in Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain Volume 3. Click here to read the official account of the Portuguese’s first arrival in the land of Guinea, according to Gomes Eannes de Azurara’s, the official royal chronicler of the King Don Affonso the Fifth of Portugal.

According to Herman L. Bennett, in African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic,

“The Portuguese do not act in accordance to existing definitions of conquest. During their initial voyages along Guinea’s coast, the Portuguese not only eschew establishing a settlement, either peacefully or by force; they also make no effort to contract a treaty so as to acquire a territorial claim to ‘the land of blacks.’ With several noteworthy exceptions, the initial Portuguese encounter with Guinea constituted chattel raids. Such raids underscore the commercial imperatives of those ‘notable deeds’ and of Portugal’s conquests.

Not to be outdone, the English, led by John Hawkins came to Guinea as violent, uncivilized barbaric criminals. West Africa: Quest For Gold and God 1475-1578 by John W. Blake recalls,

“After 1553 . . . English traders henceforth made regular voyages to Guinea. . . . The later struggles were the outcome of acts of pure aggression, perpetrated by groups of enterprising merchants and sailors in England and in France. . . . the Englishman, William Hawkins, seems to have sent three expeditions between 1530 and 1532. . . . Englishmen ventured to Guinea once more after 1553, and the international struggle in West Africa assumed hitherto unrivaled proportions. . . .Taken as a whole, a sordid fight for trade resulted in which little mercy was given and none expected, while the interests of the negroes were entirely subordinated to those of the whites. . . . London merchants and Plymouth sailors now advanced religious arguments, as well as the argument of force, to support their clandestine operations in Guinea. . . . England, as was perhaps natural for the paramount protestant state, took the lead in Guinea enterprises from 1559 to 1571. . . .It was John Hawkins who first put into operation the idea of English participation in the Africo-Caribbean slave trade, . . . .We hear of at least one other English ship which loaded 125 negroes at Cape Verde in the winter of 1564-5 .”

In A History of The Upper Guinea Coast 1545 to 1800, Walter Rodney Walter adds,

“Hawkins’ methods were typical of the first phase which the Portuguese had long left behind. He made direct attacks on unsuspecting villagers, and he seized slaves whom the Portuguese had purchased.

LET US NOW CONSIDER THE SPECIFIC NARRATIVE USED BY AFRICAN SCHOLARS TO DESCRIBE BALANTA

Walter Rodney writes:

“The earliest European reports disclose that the Balantas had a multiplicity of petty settlements consisting of family lineages (Fernandes, 80) . . . . The Balantas had quantities of prime yams…. The best farmers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - the Balantas, the Banhuns, and the Djolas- all had cattle and goats …. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Andre Dornelas pointed out that Balanta territory was free from heavy vegetation. It was these very Balantas who reared the most livestock in the area, and it was they who provided supplies of foodstuffs for their neighbors….That peoples who were far superior producers of food than the Mande and Fula are consistently dubbed ‘Primitives’ is due solely to the contention that they did not erect a superstructure of states. . . . It is only the Balantas who can be cited as lacking the institution of kingship. At any rate there seemed to have been little or no differentiation within Balanta society on the basis of who held property, authority and coercive power. Some sources affirmed that the Balantas had no kings, while an early sixteenth-century statement that the Balanta ‘kings’ were no different from their subjects must be taken as referring simply to the heads of the village and family settlements. . . . as in the case of the Balantas, the family is the sole effective social and political unit. . . .

The distribution of goods, to take a very important facet of social activity, was extremely well organized on an inter-tribal basis in the Geba-Casamance area, and one of the groups primarily concerned in this were the Balantas, who are often cited as the most typical example of the inhibited Primitives. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese realized that the Balantas were the chief agriculturalists and the suppliers of food to the neighboring peoples. The Beafadas and Papels were heavily dependent on Balanta produce, and in return, owing to the Balanta refusal to trade with the Europeans, goods of European origin reached them via the Beafadas and the Papels. The Balantas did not allow foreigners in their midst, but they were always present in the numerous markets held in the territory of their neighbors. . . .

Among the Balantas, who are to be classed as a ‘stateless society’, the system of land tenure is different. The Balantas are all small landowners, working their lands on the principle of voluntary reciprocal labour.”

In Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations Along The Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400 -1900, Walter Hawthorne writes,

“Like most in the coastal reaches of Guinea-Bissau, Balanta society was politically decentralized. In such societies, the village or confederation of villages was the largest political unit. Though a range of positions of authority often existed within villages and confederations, no one person or group claimed prerogatives over the legitimate use of coercive force. In face-to-face meetings involving many people, representatives from multiple households sat as councils threshing out decisions affecting the whole.

Concerning the Balanta, then, there are two narratives. The European narrative says that the Balanta were cruel savages who needed their souls saved and were thus to be legally enslaved. The African narrative says that the Balanta were an egalitarian society where everyone worked together and there was no monopoly of authority or coercive force. All decision affecting the people were made by consensus through a council of elders. The Balanta were the best farmers, participated in an organized pan-ethnic market and fed the local people regardless of ethnicity. 

SO THE QUESTION IS, WHO WERE THE REAL CHAMPIONS OF FREEDOM, LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY? THE EUROPEANS OR THE BALANTA?

In defense of their freedom, Hawthorne describes the Balanta military skill,

“In part, the Balanta and other coastal groups resisted enslavement by exploiting the advantages offered by the region in which they lived. Put simply, the coast offered more defenses and opportunities for counterattack against slave-raiding armies and other enemies than did the savanna-woodland interior. In the early twentieth century, Portuguese administrator Alberto Gomes Pimentel explained how the Balanta utilized the natural protection of mangrove-covered areas – terrafe in Guinean creole – when they were confronted with an attack from a well-organized and well-armed enemy seeking captives or booty: ‘Armed with guns and large swords, the Balanta, who did not generally employ any resistance on these occasions. . . . pretended to flee (it was their tactic), suffering a withdrawal and going to hide in the ‘terrafe’ on the margins on the rivers and lagoons, spreading out in the flats some distance so as not to be shot by their enemies. The attackers. . . . then began to return for their lands with all of the spoils of war’. Organizing rapidly and allying themselves with others in the area, the Balanta typically followed their enemies through the densely forested coastal region. At times, the Balanta waited until their attackers had almost reached their homelands before giving ‘a few shots and making considerable noise so as to cause a panic.’ The Balanta then engaged their enemies in combat, ‘many times corpo a corpo’. . . .

Upon finding a stranded boat, young Balanta warriors summoned tabanca age-grade members with a bombolom. This instrument, a hollowed section of tree trunk with a horizontal slit that is struck with two sticks, is used by Balanta today to transmit detailed information over long distances. In casual conversation, one elder told me that the bombolom is ‘the Balanta telephone.’ Alvares described these instruments in the early seventeenth century:‘Bombalous are used to signal what they want announced in a very public way within districts or among neighboring village, and these serve the same purpose as do sentinels and beacons, so that as soon as the sound of the bombalous is heard this is the signal for all to listen. . . . When a war breaks out, within an hour it is known over a district of 20 leagues. If there are settlements all the way the information is passed along more easily, even if the houses are a league apart, since each tells the next.’ Similarly, Spanish Capuchins specifically mentioned that Balanta ‘play a certain instrument that they call in their language bombolon’ to ‘announce the attack.’

Having assembled in what the Capuchins called ‘a great number,’ Balanta warriors struck their stranded victims quickly and with overwhelming force. ‘Upon approaching a boat,’ the Capuchins said, ‘they attack with fury, they kill, rob, capture and make off with everything.’ Such attacks happened with a great deal of regularity and struck fear in the hearts of merchants and missionaries alike. Others also commented on the frequency of Balanta raids on river vessels. On March 24, 1694, Bispo Portuense feared that he would fall victim to the Balanta when his boat, guided by grumetes, ran aground on a sandbar, probably on the Canal do Impernal, ‘very close to the territory of those barbarians.’ . . . .

Faced with an impediment to the flow of trade to their ports, the Portuguese tried to bring an end to Balanta raids. But they were outclassed militarily by skilled Balanta age-grade fighters. Portuguese adjutant Amaro Rodrigues and his crew certainly discovered this. In 1696, he and a group of fourteen soldiers from a Portuguese post on Bissau anchored their craft somewhere near a Balanta village close to where Bissau’s Captain Jose Pinheiro had ordered the men to stage an attack. However, the Portuguese strategy was ill conceived. A sizable group of Balanta struck a blow against the crew before they had even left their boat. The Balanta killed Rodrigues and two Portuguese soldiers and took twelve people captive.

Returning to Hawthorne’s Strategies of the Decentralized,

“In 1777, Portuguese commander Ignacio Bayao reported from Bissau that he was furious that Balanta had been adversely affecting the regional flow of slaves and other goods carried by boats along Guinea-Bissau’s rivers. It was ‘not possible,’ he wrote, ‘to navigate boats for those [Balanta] parts without some fear of the continuous robbing that they have done, making captive those who navigate in the aforementioned boats.’ In response, Bayao sent infantrymen in two vessels ‘armed for war’ into Balanta territories. After these men had anchored, disembarked, and ventured some distance inland, they ‘destroyed some men, burning nine villages’ and then made a hasty retreat back to the river. Finding their vessels rendered ‘disorderly,’ the infantrymen were quickly surrounded by well-armed Balanta. Bayao lamented that ‘twenty men from two infantry companies’ were taken captive or killed. Having sent out more patrols to subdue the ‘savage Balanta’ and having attempted a ‘war’ against this decentralized people, the Portuguese found that conditions on Guinea- Bissau’s rivers did not improve.’

Viewing the regional slave trade as a threat to their communities, the Balanta continued their raids on merchant vessels transporting captives and other goods. Such raids would tax Portuguese patience throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century . . . . Thus, by garnering weapons and iron in regional markets and from Luso-African merchants, many Balanta communities, like those of other decentralized coastal societies, were not only able to stand up to threats posed by the slaving armies of Kaabu and Casamance, they were also able to withstand assaults by Portuguese who were attempting to profit by insuring the smooth running of the coastal trade routes that moved captives to area ports.”

BALANTA MAN VS. HALLOWEEN

Knowing the importance of narratives, and having the power to shape them, I am combating the European narrative about the Balanta on one of their cultural holidays, Halloween. In America, this is a day when white people celebrate “horror”. They make movies about depravity, evil, murder and dismemberment and then dress their children in costumes portraying the depraved characters. They also make movies and dress their children in costumes of skeletons and ghosts, creating an fearful emotional response to dead people. This is the exact opposite of Balanta culture, which maintains a living connection with “enas”, the living vital life force energy that survives “after death” and continues to communicate with those living on earth. Finally, the white Americans also create movies about superheroes glorifying the character traits of courage and heroism, defeating “bad people” and criminals. They depict theses superheros to reflect their culture and their narrative.

walmart halloween.JPG
Halloween-Movies-Streaming-On-Netflix.jpg

So today, to combat this narrative, I have summoned Balanta Man! He is the real life Balanta Super Hero who killed the brutal, European criminals, rapists and murderers that came to steal Balanta children and murder those they could not enslave. According to Balanta legends, their age-grade warriors had the power to transform themselves into animals and other creatures.

Fanando intiate.JPG

Return to Khuti Part 2: The Mesintu and Anu Ancestors of the Balanta

In Return to Khuti: The Great Pyramid and Balanta we learned that the Great Pyramid is properly called “Khuti” and was built by the old Stellar Cult people of Egypt, the followers of Horus called Mesinu, who were descendants of the earlier Mesenti/Mesintu, or followers of Horus Behutet. Now we are going to learn about the conflict with the Mesintu and why our Balanta ancestors migrated from the Nile Valley just prior to the conquest of Menes (Narmer) and the establishment of the first dynasty in Kemet (Egypt).

Siphiwe in front of Egyptian Wall contemplating.JPG

Excerpt from Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain Volume 1:

The Mesintu Blacksmiths and Cult of Horus at Edfu

 

“Metals were introduced into Egypt in very ancient times, since the class of blacksmiths is associated with the worship of Horus of Edfu and appears in the account of the mythical wars of that God.” “The earliest tools we possess in copper or bronze date from the Fourth Dynasty.” (Gladstone on “Metallic Copper, Tin and Antimony form Ancient Egypt,” in the Proceedings of the Biblical Archaeological Society, 1891-92, pp. 223-26).

“…. Copper, tin, and antimony were known to these ancient Egyptians from the earliest times of their Totemic Sociology, thousands of years before the Stellar Mythos, at which period of time the Pyramids of Gizeh were built.”

Maspero is right in associating the blacksmiths with Horus of Edfu.

As I have stated, the Kavirondo Nilotic Negroes work in iron, and also in copper, and amongst these people their blacksmiths are called Yothetth. There is a separate caste called “Uvino,” and amongst the Gemi tribe the blacksmiths were formed into a religious secret society, and still possess all the myths of Horus of Edfu. Horus I was the great chief in their Hero Cult, and “the Chief Artificer in Metals, “i.e. he was recognized as the Chief Hero of this clan or secret society.”

It was these ‘blacksmiths’ – men who knew how to smelt iron ore and to forge the metal into weapons of offence and defense – who formed themselves into the ‘big clan of Blacksmiths,’ having Horus as their astronomical Chief, that came up from the South to the North in pre-dynastic times, and , having conquered the Masaba Negroes and the Nilotic  Negroes (Balanta ancestors), who were then the inhabitants of Egypt, established themselves in Egypt, making Edfu their chief city and center. They possessed the knowledge of working in metals, brick-making, and pottery. . . . They could not but meet with success when warring, because they were armed with superior weapons; troops armed with weapons of iron must be successful against those armed with weapons of flint. The Egyptians called these ‘followers of Horus’ Mesintu or Mesinti, which I believe was the original name for all those tribes, and which may now be applied to the Masai group.  As we know, Horus was their deified God, and as Edfu became their center, he was styled “Lord of the forge city,’ The Great Master Blacksmith. It was here that they first built a sanctuary or temple which was called ‘Mesnet” The hieroglyphic here proves that these people were those belonging to the Masai ancestors.”

Article JE 34210 in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt. Pre-dynastic period. It is likely that this knife was not used in daily life, but rather for religious purposes.

Article JE 34210 in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt. Pre-dynastic period. It is likely that this knife was not used in daily life, but rather for religious purposes.

Now, my sons, reconsider what Credo Mutwa (the last living sangoma, or traditional Bantu healer, to undergo the thwasa sangoma training and initiation) has said: “the Watu-Tu-Tsi and the Masai – the Children of the Dragon (according to legend, spawned by the evil serpent with the sole purpose of oppressing and destroying the Bantu).”

In the book, Black Arabia & The African Origin of Islam, Wesley Muhammad writes,

“Even S.O.Y. Ketia, in a number of meticulous studies, found that:

‘The peopling of what is now the Egyptian Nile Valley, judging from archaeological and biological data, was apparently the result of a complex interaction between coastal northern Africans, ‘neolithic’ Saharans, Nilotic hunters, and riverine proto-Nubians with some influence and migration from the Levant. The major variability of early ‘Egyptians’ is thus seen to have been mainly established in the proto-predynastic period by the settling of all these people.’”

Thus, there was a mix of various different people in the Nile Valley area where the ancient ancestors of the Balanta lived. Coming into contact with these different groups of people created conflicts. Diop continues in “Political and Social Evolution of Ancient Egypt”:

“The political unification of the Nile Valley was effected for the first time from the south, from the kingdom of Nekhen in Upper Egypt. Narmer’s Tablet, discovered by Quibell in Hierakonpolis, retraced its various episodes.

Nekhen Map.JPG

The capital of the united kingdom was transferred to Tjenu (Thinis) near Abydos. This was the period of the first two Tjenu (Thinite) dynasties (3000-2778). By the Third Dynasty (2778-2723), centralization of the monarchy was complete. All the technological and cultural elements of Egyptian civilization were already in place and had only to be perpetuated. . . . Petrie affirmed that this dynasty, the first to give Egyptian civilization its almost definitive form and expression, was of Sudanese Nubian origin. It was easier to recognize the Negro origin of the Egyptians when the initial display of their civilization coincided with an unquestionably Negro dynasty. The equally Negro features of the protodynastic face of Tera Neter and those of the first king to unify the valley, also prove that this is the only valid hypothesis….

‘With administrative centralization in the Third Dynasty,’ writes Jacques Piernne, ‘there was no longer any noble or privileged class.’ However, the clergy, guardian of the faith that established the king’s authority, was a corps apart, well organized and relatively independent. Until then it had exercised its spiritual guardianship at the coronation of the king in the temple at Heliopolis. But, to make his power absolute, the king clashed with the clergy. From then on he renounced the Heliopolis coronation and had himself crowned in his own palace at Memphis. He proclaimed the principle of his omnipotence by divine right, added ‘Great God’ to his titles, and was free from any human control. The advent of the Fourth Dynasty, with the Giza pyramids, showed that the monarchy had reached its zenith.

Thereafter, the regime again evolved toward feudalism. The courtiers constituted a special corps of dignitaries which would make itself hereditary by usage, and soon by right. The cycle just described was twice more repeated almost identically and the history of ancient Egypt was to end without ever developing into a republic nor creating true secular thought. The feudal system that had just triumphed with the Fifth Dynasty reached its peak with the Sixth. It then engendered general stagnation in the economy and the administration of the State in urban as well as rural areas. And the Sixth Dynasty was to end with the first popular uprising in Egyptian history.

Obviously, division of labor on the basis of craftmanship already existed. The cities doubtless were active centers of trade with the eastern Mediterranean. Their idle poverty-stricken masses would take an active pat in the revolt. The mores of the nobility created a special class of men: servants contracted for varying tenure. The text describing these events shows that the country had plunged into anarchy; insecurity reigned, especially in the Delta with the raids by “Asiatics”. The latter monopolized the jobs intended for Egyptians in the various workshops and urban building yards.

The wretched of Memphis, capital and sanctuary of royalty, pillaged the city, robbing the rich and driving them into the streets. The movement soon spread to other cities. Sais was temporarily governed by a group of ten notables. The situation throughout the city was poignantly described in that text:

‘Thieves become proprietors and the former rich are robbed. Those dressed in fine garments are beaten. Ladies who had never set foot outside now go out. The children of nobles are dashed against the walls. Towns are abandoned. Doors, walls, columns are set aflame. The offspring of the great are thrown into the street. Nobles are hungry and in distress. Servants now are served. Noble ladies flee hungry and in distress. Servants now are served. Noble ladies flee… [their children] cringe in fear of death. The country is full of malcontents. Peasants wear shields into the fields. Man slays his own brother. The roads are traps. People lie in ambush until [the farmer] returns in the evening; then they steal whatever he is carrying. Beaten with cudgels, he is shamefully killed. Cattle roam at will; no one attends to them . . .

Each man leads away any animals he has branded. . . . Everywhere crops are rotting; clothing, spices, oil are lacking. Filth covers the earth. The government stores are looted, and their guards struck down. People eat grass and drink water. So great is their hunger that they eat the food intended for swine. The dead are thrown into the river; the Nile is a sepulcher. Public records are no longer secret.’

Apparently, the poor, at least for a time, retained the position thus acquired, for economic life and trade regained their normal course; wealth reappeared, though no longer in the same hands: ‘Luxury is widespread, but it is the poor who now are affluent. He who had nothing, possesses treasures, and the great flatter him . . .’

So, the first cycle of Egyptian history ended with the collapse of the Old Kingdom. It had begun with the feudalism that preceded the first political unification.; it closed in anarchy and feudalism. Monarchy sank into feudalism without being directly attacked. In fact, the principle of monarchy could not have been gravely threatened. Perhaps there were a few timid attempts at self-government in the Delta cities, as at Sais. But this was probably a temporary solution dictated by the suddenness of the crisis and the lack of public authority that followed the invasion of the Delta by the Asiatics. Cities on the invasion route were abruptly compelled to assure their own safety as the faced the common enemy. Confronted by this situation, the former provincial governors in Upper and Middle Egypt set themselves up as independent feudal lords, freed henceforth from any royal overlordship, though they did not ever question the principle of monarchy itself. On the contrary, each in his own way was trying to be king; they called themselves kings of their own regions. Apparently the bureaucratic apparatus, which weighed so heavily on the poor, along with royal absolutism, was the main target. . . . After that revolution, all Egyptians had a right to the ‘Osirian death,’ the privilege of survival in the hereafter, previously reserved for the Pharaoh as the only one with a Ka, a soul, in the sky.

Item JE 40679, Third Triad Statue of Menkaure in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt. 4th Dynasty, Old Kingdom, Valley Temple of Menkaure, Giza. King Menkaure with Hathor and the Goddess of the nome Cynopolis

Item JE 40679, Third Triad Statue of Menkaure in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt. 4th Dynasty, Old Kingdom, Valley Temple of Menkaure, Giza. King Menkaure with Hathor and the Goddess of the nome Cynopolis

Two facts, however, must be noted. The discontent was strong enough completely to disrupt Egyptian society throughout the entire country. But it lacked direction and coordination, the strength of modern movements. That would have required a level of popular education incompatible with the possibilities and forms of education at the time. Above all, it was the size of the territory that overcame the insurgents. The country was already unified, and royalty could take temporary refuge in the surrounding provinces, if only in the guise of an embryonic feudalism. The sack of Memphis shows that the monarchy could have been definitely conquered and swept away if the Egyptian kingdom were reduced to the size of a single city comparable to the Greek city-state.

In reality, whatever may have been the ‘virtues’ of Egypt’s social organization, it finally created. . . . intolerable abuses and uprisings . . .”

Finally, Chancellor Williams has this to say:

“ [The Anu] refused to accept the cult of Hours that dominated the Nile delta. They, therefore, formed a ‘second nation’ in Upper Egypt [Nubia] and established their national religious shrines at Omnos, Thebes, Thinis and Napata.”

And now my sons, a concluding observation. Our Balanta ancestors, a mix of Bantu and Sudanese origins, traveled from the foot of the Mountains of the Moon and traveled along the river until they reached Wadi Kubbaniya around 17,500 BC.  About 5000 BC they started migrating, some going west all the way to Lake Chad and then following the Niger River and others. Known as the Anu, going north to Nekhen (Hierakonpolis), where they established the first city in human history.

When the traditional ANU culture OF THE BALANTA ANCESTORS became violated with the concepts of leadership and inequality, and faced with the weapons of the murderous Mesintu and cult of Hours at Edfu, our Balanta ancestors chose to migrate to unpopulated areas to continue their egalitarian way of life.

Those who remained in the land of Ta-Meri revolted against the Pharaoh. Thus, it was literally our ancestors, as indicated by the DNA markers E3a*-M2 (also called E1b1a), E-V38, M1 and L0a1 in the Balanta, who created civilization, the first city and the culture of the first dynasty in Kemet.

However, from the perspective of our Balanta ancestors, the establishment of Kemet was not the great and glorious achievement that everyone seems to make it. In fact, it was the END of our great and glorious achievement. That is why they left.

Now you can understand Dr. John Henrik Clarke when he said,

“The early Africans, in building great river civilizations, built a concept which they did not call religion, though your religions came out of them. They called it ‘spirituality’. What they created was a concept of a Force of the Universe, that was much larger than denominations, much larger than the one-dimensional things that eventually man called religions. It had gone beyond the narrow concepts that we live under right now. And it is difficult for you to understand, but that age was man’s highest spiritual and moral age. And that by seizing upon this age, mostly by foreigners who did not understand the original African creation, the spirituality of man regressed, and did not leap forward, but regressed. They organized into pockets and gave it names. But before the African gave it a name but practiced it as a great force of the universe, it was then when it had its greatest value. And foreigners picked out of it little pieces and departmentalized it into religious pockets and started war between one pocket and another, then broke the pockets down into something called denominations, then started war between one denomination and the other”

Now you understand why Credo Mutwa says,

“Tribal historians today still sigh for those days when there was only one race of man and the Spirit of Peace walked the land – when every man woman and child, yea, every beast felt the soothing protection of the soft-eyed, infinitely wise Mothers of the People.

This was the first and last instance in the whole record of the Black People of Africa when pure witchcraft and black magic were used, not to terrorize people, but to keep peace in the land. For hundreds of years peace reigned in the land of the Ba-Ntu and in this atmosphere of peace the Great Belief was born. When eventually this nation broke up into the various tribes the Great Belief had taken such a strong hold on the souls and minds of people that they were completely lost without it."

Our ancestors left Ta-Meri and Ta-Nihisi again during the invasion of the Hyksos, whom our ancestors called ‘the ignoble Asians,’ after the end of the Middle Kingdom from 2500 BC to 2333 BC according to the old chronology and 1675 BC to 1600 BC according to the new chronology. From the first migration out of Ta-Nihisi and Ta-Meri in Nubia and Kemet to the last, there were thirty -three dynasties in Kemet lasting more than three thousand years. However, our concern is with those that left, for it is from them that we are descended.

King Senuseret.JPG
King Senuseret 2.JPG
Colossus of King Senwosret I.JPG

NOTE: BE CAREFUL OF STUDYING HISTORY WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE. AFRICAN AMERICANS LOST THEIR ANCESTRAL IDENTITIES DURING THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE. MOST HAVE NOT TAKEN GENETIC TESTING TO IDENTIFY THEIR ACTUAL ANCESTORS. IN THEIR SEARCH FOR IDENTITY, THEY OFTEN ATTACH TO ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING RELATED TO AFRICA. KEMET, OR EGYPT, IS A GREAT EXAMPLE. NOT KNOWING HOW TO READ HIEROGLYPHICS, NOT STUDYING ACTUAL KEMETIC HISTORY FROM THEIR OWN ANCESTRAL PERSPECTIVE, THEY TEND TO GLORIFY THE ‘GREAT’ ACHIEVEMENTS AND ALL THINGS RELATED TO EGYPT WITHOUT KNOWING THAT THEY COULD BE GLORIFYING THEIR HISTORICAL ENEMIES. THE LESSON IS: KNOW THYSELF AND BE DISCRIMINATING IN WHAT YOU STUDY AND PROMOTE. IF I DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER, I WOULD HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THE GREAT KING SENWOSRET AS IF THAT WERE A CREDIT TO MY ANCESTORS …..

SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES OF BALANTA ANCESTORS' ANCIENT SPIRITUALITY APPLIED TO MY VISIT TO EGYPT AND MY MARRIAGE: A CASE STUDY ON MY SECOND ANNIVERSARY

“These are for you and your wife. They are for health and prosperity.”

- Adel Mohamed Ahmed, Nubian salesclerk at the Papyrus Museum, 49 Pyramids Street in the Merit Center El Bazar at the Giza Pyramid complex, presenting me and my wife two turquoise scarab talismans.

Scarabs 2.JPG

Today, October 10, 2019, is the second anniversary of my marriage to the love of my life, Zhou YuTong. Our marriage became somewhat famous and you can read about that story here.

Recently, my wife and I traveled to Heliopolis, Egypt in order to compete in the 1st International Masters Swimming Championships. The purpose of traveling all the way to Egypt to compete in this event was more than just athletic. It was spiritual. I explained it in the article, A Swimmer’s Race:

“On September 28, 2010, I received my genetic DNA results from African Ancestry. My paternal DNA was a 100% match with the Balanta people in Guinea Bissau. Since then, I have researched my Balanta ancestry and discovered that they originated in East Africa.  Haplogroup E1b1a is a direct basal branch of Y-chromosome haplogroup E-V38 which originated in the Horn of Africa about 42,300 years before the present. Further research showed that these ancestors of mine migrated down the Nile River and settled a place called Wadi Kubbaniya in modern day Sudan around 18,500 BC.  Research also showed that they continued to migrate down the Nile River and established the first city called Nekhen. By 3200 BC, they had migrated into what is called Upper and Lower Egypt and settled the first areas called Nuits or Nomes. The first Nuit/Nome was called Ta-Seti. The 13th Nuit/Nome that my ancestors settled was called Iunu. In the Bible, it is called “On”. The Greeks called it “Heliopolis” and today, the city is called Cairo. 

 

On October 4-5, 2019, the Heliopolis Sporting Club in Cairo, Egypt will be hosting the 1st International Swimming Masters Championships. Now you can understand why competing in this event is so important to me. For the first time, the world’s best Masters Swimmers are going to compete in Africa, in the very city that my ancestors founded. It is important to me that one of the descendants of the city’s original founders – me – not only competes but wins. To be honest, I get upset whenever I see that the “African Swimmer of the Year” is in fact, of European origin. This year, Ed Acura gained attention with his short movie, A Film Called Blacks Can’t Swim. I want to make my contribution, my statement, that not only can blacks swim, we can win! I think it is important that one of the champions at this inaugural competition, is a black swimmer. I think it can inspire a new generation of young swimmers as well as adult swimmers on the continent of Africa.”

 

I accomplished my mission, winning six gold medals for my ancestors and honoring them on the podium. According to the media,  Siphiwe Baleka’s Sorcery Dominates the 1st International Masters Swimming Championships

“It wasn’t his performance in the pool, however, that received the most attention. All eyes were on Baleka because he painted his body in traditional African decorations. Perhaps this was the first time that anyone had ever displayed such African culture in the history of competitive swimming. When asked why he did this, Baleka said, ‘DNA testing shows that my Balanta ancestors were the first people to settle in what is called Egypt today long before the pyramids were built. I wanted to honor them.’” 

Siphiwe on podium in Egypt.jpg

So, what does this have to do with my marriage and ancient spirituality?

After the competition, on our last day in Egypt, we went on a tour. We had already been to Khuti, The Great Pyramid designed by Nu-Er-nub-Ari and mistakenly attributed to Pharaoh Khufu, and we had already visited the Egyptian Museum. Now, on the last day, after visiting Khuti and Hu (The Sphinx) for the second time, we stopped at a papyrus museum at 49 Pyramids Street in the Merit Center El Bazar at the Giza Pyramid complex. Here, I met Adel Mohamed Ahmed and this is where the story takes a turn.

Coming to Egypt, I had hoped to make a connection with Nubian people. I knew that their community was located in Aswan and further south. Still, surely, there must be some Nubian people somewhere in Cairo. However, in the city of 22 million people, I saw 99% Arabs. Having read a ton of John Henrik Clarke and Chancellor William’s The Destruction of Black Civilization, as well as a ton of other books on the subject, I saw first hand how this place, Egypt, formerly called Kemet, originally the home to various “black” people, had been invaded by foreigners, and that the entire history of Egypt is the story of how these foreigners attacked and waged a relentless war against these black peoples, and succeeded in taking their land while pushing the black people south into Nubia. For me, seeing all these Arabs in the place that my ancestors originally settled, making a ton of money on tourism to visit the Pyramids that black people built, hurt my spirit.

After watching a demonstration on how my ancestors were the first to create paper from the papyrus plant, I walked around the museum looking at different items. I found a gold chair and asked a man in the store how much it cost. “It’s about US $2,500,” Adel said.

“If I sit on it, do I have to buy it?” I asked him while already sitting in it. He laughed. This was the first conversation I had in Egypt with a black man.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Nubia”, he answered. And with that we launched into a conversation about where we come from. He told his story. I told mine. We bonded. And then he said, “My grandfather told me, ‘You are Nubia. We have the roots in maybe Ethiopia and also Guinea Bissau.” Now, in Volume I of my book, Balanta B’urassa, My Sons, Those Who Resist Remain, I document the seven migrations of the Balanta ancient ancestors to and from the Nile Valley prior to 322 B.C. On page 40 I wrote,

“First, since the Balanta E1b1a1 DNA comes from the E-Vs8 Y-chromosome haplogroup which originated in the Horn of Africa 42,300 years before the present, then that means our family history starts in the Horn of Africa and NOT in ‘The Old Land’ near modern day Cameroon (according to Bantu Historian Credo Mutwa). This suggests that our family started in East Africa, migrated to The Old Land, and then migrated back into East Africa and then back to West Africa and finally to Guinea Bissau. Is this possible?

Consider again the statement, haplogroup E in general is believed to have originated in Northeast Africa and was later introduced to West Africa from where it spread around 5,000 years ago to Central, Southern and Southeastern Africa with the Bantu expansion.”

You can imagine my surprise and fascination with the fact that in a city of 22 million people, I meet one Nubian person who tells me that his grandfather told him that his Nubian roots came from both Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau!

That was the first “sign”.

After making our purchases, Ahmed handed me two turquoise scarab beetles, explaining that these were to bring my wife and I health and prosperity.

This was the second “sign.”

Siphiwe and Tong at Pyramids 1.jpg

In discussing how Totemism and the Cult of Motherhood was created in Volume I of my book, Balanta B’urassa, My Sons, Those Who Resist Remain, on page 186 I quoted Dr. Yosef ben Jochannan, explaining,

“The dung beetle hibernates, goes into the manure of a donkey, horse and the cow, only animals with grass manure. And that beetle remains in there for twenty-eight days; you know that particular beetle died in your mind. And when the beetle finally comes out, what better symbol will you have than the resurrection? . . .  Thus, the beetle became the symbol of resurrection. Of course, the religion itself has started then. Just imagine you’ve got to go back 1000 years and see your woman giving birth to a baby. . . . As you are standing there and this baby comes from the woman’s organ. You witness this . . . . You can’t perceive that you have anything to do with this 10,000 or 5,000 years ago. Witnessing the birth of that baby sets you thinking. You immediately start to transcend your mind, and you also start to attribute this to something beyond. Thus, you start to believe. You start to wonder, why is it here? Where did it come from? And where is it going? Because you are now experiencing birth! But your experience is coming from a woman. Thus, you start to pray, and the woman becomes your Goddess, your first deity. She becomes Goddess Nut, the goddess of the sky; and you become God Geb, the god of the earth. You suddenly see the sun in all of this and you realize that when the sun came the light came; and when the sun went, the light went; when the moon came you saw a moon in there and you don’t see any light because the light is not shining on it. So, you see there is a God, at least there is the major attribute of God because you realize when that doesn’t happen, the crops and the vegetation don’t come.

You also realize that the sun and the moon make the river rise and the Africans recording these factors created the science of astronomy and astrology. Astrology, having nothing to do with your love life. Astronomy is the chart of the scientific data of the movement of the planet and the sun and so forth, to the movement of each other. Astrology is a physical relationship of astronomy, the water rising at the high tide and that is what the ancients spoke about and the division of the two disciplines. . . .

In those days the students would come and read for their education. There were no books to take home, there were no publishing houses like now. You had only one book and most of the subjects were taught orally. . . . So the pre-dynastic period was the period of the introduction of religion, of mathematics and science, engineering, law, medicine and so forth.”

Siphiwe and Tong on Camel.jpg

So now that you know the story, let’s analyze my experience according to the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors

1.    The purpose of traveling to Egypt was to honor my ancestors who were among the original inhabitants of the area. This was significant because, according to Principle #4  - “The spirits of the first ancestors, highly exalted in the superhuman world, possess extraordinary force inasmuch as they are the founders of the human race and propagators of the divine inheritance of vital human strength.”

 

2.    On the first day of my visit, I returned to Khuti, the great pyramid, and Hu, the Sphinx. On the second day I visited the Egyptian Museum. This brought me into direct contact with the oldest objects on earth that were possessed by my ancestors. This was significant because, according to Principle #21 – “The fact that a thing has belonged to anyone, that it has been in strict relationship with a person, leads the Bantu to conclude that this thing shares the vital influence of its owner. It is what ethnologists like to call ‘contagious magic, sympathetic magic”; but it is neither contact nor ‘sympathy’ that are the active elements, but solely the vital force of the owner, which acts, as one knows, because it persists in the being of the thing possessed or used by him.”

 

3.       At the 1st International Masters Swimming Competition, I competed while decorated with the traditional body painting of Nubians engaged in competition. The media described this as “Sorcery”. This was significant because, according to Principles #2 and #3 – “Bantu behavior is centered in a single value: vital force. The Bantu say, in respect of a number of strange practices in which we see neither rhyme nor reason, that their purpose is to acquire life, strength or vital force, to live strongly, that they are to make life stronger, or to assure that force shall remain perpetually in one’s posterity. Force, the potent life, vital energy are the object of prayers and invocations to God, to the spirits and to the dead, as well as of all that is usually called magic, sorcery or magical remedies. The Bantu will tell you that they go to a diviner to learn the words of life, so that he can teach them the way of making life stronger.”

 

The body painting is a kind of “word of life” to make my vital force energy stronger in the same way that a soldier, wearing a uniform, feels the pride of his country, thereby making him a stronger, tougher, more determined soldier. In addition, Principle #12 -  “In what Europeans call ‘primitive’ magic there is, to Bantu eyes, no operation of supernatural, indeterminate forces, but simply the interaction between natural forces, as they were created by God and as they were put by him at the disposal of men.”

 

Finally, it was significant because of Principle #22 – “The ‘kilumu’ or ‘nganga’, that is to say the man who possesses a clearer than usual vision of natural forces and their interaction, the man who has the power of selecting these forces and of directing them towards a determinist usage in particular cases, becomes what he is only because he has been ‘seized’ by the living influence of a deceased ancestor or of a spirit, or even because he has been ‘initiated’ by another ‘kilumbu’ or ‘nganga’.”

 

4.    I won six gold medals. Why is this significant? In Volume II of Balanta B’urassa, My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain, I quoted Chancellor Williams, saying,

“The African masses caught it from all directions as their own leaders progressively became ‘Caucasian’ Hamites and Semites, and as many who were unmistakably full-blooded Africans became as predatory as were their known enemies. It appears that from time immemorial, stark greed, the desire for wealth, has overridden all humane considerations. Greed has served as a kind of anesthesia, deadening humane sentiments and breaking the bonds of affection that relates man to man. Greed was triumphant in Egypt from ancient times down into our own century. Egypt was the major slave exchange center in Africa. Nubia (the Northern Sudan) was not only the chief source of supply for slaves, who were marched up the Second Cataract, but it was also the main source of gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, precious stones of many kinds, ebony and animal skins. These goods enriched Egypt in her expanding international trade. A hostile Egypt now stood between the black world and international commerce.”

This is significant because the very reason gold is sought after around the world is because of its vital life force energy – whereas over time just about anything else will erode and decay, gold will retain and preserve its vitality. This is why it is used for currency – it retains its value over time. By winning six gold medals, I symbolically returned this vitality to the ancestors from whom it was stolen and for which they had had suffered constant invasion from foreigners.

 

5.       Nearly two years ago, I married Zhou YuTong from Liuzhou, China. This is significant because Principles #2, #5, #6 and #11 explains the purpose of marriage - ““Bantu behavior is centered in a single value: vital force. The Bantu say, in respect of a number of strange practices in which we see neither rhyme nor reason, that their purpose is to acquire life, strength or vital force, to live strongly, that they are to make life stronger, or to assure that force shall remain perpetually in one’s posterity…. In the minds of Bantu, all beings in the universe possess vital force of their own: human, animal, vegetable, or inanimate. Each being has been endowed by God with a certain force, capable of strengthening the vital energy of the strongest being of all creation: man…. Supreme happiness, the only kind of blessing, is, to the Bantu, to possess the greatest vital force: the worst misfortune and, in very truth, the only misfortune, is, he thinks, the diminution of this power…. One force will reinforce or weaken another. This causality is in no way supernatural in the sense of going beyond the proper attributes of created nature. It is, on the contrary, a metaphysical causal action which flows out of the very nature of a created being. General knowledge of these activities belongs to the realm of natural knowledge and constitutes philosophy properly so called. The observation of the action of these forces in their specific and concrete applications would constitute Bantu natural science.”

 

The point of marriage is to find another person that consistently increases your vital force energy and for whom your vital force energy increases theirs, and then have children together. This is a happy marriage. It ensures that the greatest amount of vital life force energy remains perpetually in one’s posterity. One can now understand the real and spiritual danger of being in a toxic marriage. Since I fulfilled my debt to the ancestors by giving them two sons from a woman of African descent, I was free to find a wife that provided the greatest increase to my vital life force energy.

 

Though generally speaking, Balanta distrust for foreigners was so strong as to preclude marriage with them, Walter Hawthorne notes in his book about the Balanta that, “Through the institution of marriage, tabancas formed powerful alliances with one another. This is certainly the case today and appears to have been historically. Indeed, Armando Moraes e Castro mentioned the practice in a 1925 report about Balanta: ‘Among them there is a very curious custom. If two families are enemies, they make peace by exchanging their children in marriage…. Of particular importance in the ear of the Atlantic slave trade, marriage served to cement bonds of trust between neighboring tabancas.’”

 

6.       On the last day of my journey to Egypt, a Nubian, a direct descendant of the ancient bloodline, gave me two turquoise scarabs. This is significant because of Principle # 5 - “In the minds of Bantu, all beings in the universe possess vital force of their own: human, animal, vegetable, or inanimate. Each being has been endowed by God with a certain force, capable of strengthening the vital energy of the strongest being of all creation: man.” This is why Albert Churchward, in his book The Origin and Evolution of Religion, writes of my ancestors, “the next stage in the evolution of these Nilotic Negroes was so-called Fetishism – Magic, which may be considered further development of their Sign Language, and should be defined as a reverent regard for Amulets, Talismans, Mascots, Charms, etc. . . . To these Negroes this ‘Fetish’ or ‘Charm’ represents a visible symbol of Magical Power to influence the elemental or ancestral Spirits;

Scarabs 3.JPG

Now we can put all of this together and understand the meaning of my experience in Egypt. Two years ago, today, I married my wife, Zhou YuTong. I promised to love her, cherish her, care for her and protect her for the rest of my life. My intention was to propose to her on the podium after becoming the World Champion in the men’s 45- 49 age group at the world championships, thereby proving that among men my age, I had more vital energy or power in my field of endeavor, than any man alive in the world. Unfortunately, I only managed to achieve four silver medals, and had to settle for having the second most amount of vital energy among my peers in the world. Nevertheless, I proposed, and she accepted. On this day, two years ago, we got married.

Some people criticized me for having a “mixed” marriage as if marrying another non-white (Chinese) person was the same as marrying a white person and thus, a beneficiary of white supremacy. However, I remind such critics that when the Balanta were fighting for their freedom and independence against the Portuguese, Amilcar Cabral, in August of 1960, led a delegation to the People’s Republic of China and it was the Chinese who were the first to give the Balanta freedom fighters weapons and military training. It is often said that in the time of need, you learn who your friends are.

When asked why I wanted to marry Zhou YuTong, a woman who did not speak my language and whose language I did not speak, whose culture was completely different, I could only reply, “She increases my vital energy.” That is just something you feel, you know it when you have it. For two years, our peaceful home-life and my increased vital energy allowed me the two most productive years of my life. Among other things, I published nine books, three of them on the history of the Balanta people. So it was not a coincidence that after completing my books on Balanta and traveling to Egypt to offer them to the ancestors, along with the six gold medals, I should end up in a museum dedicated to the history of paper-making by my ancestors, to be approached by a Nubian man who presented me with the two turquoise (the color of the swimming pool) scarabs (symbols of eternal life) as gifts expressly for me and my wife.

Here I was, after absorbing so much vital life force energy, being presented with the blessings of my ancestors, an acknowledgement that my offerings had been accepted. Perhaps you can begin to understand now the magnitude of the amount of vital life force energy, according to the Great Belief of My Balanta Ancestors’ Ancient Spirituality, contained in the scarab talisman which my wife and I now wear. Whether you think such talismans and charms are mere superstition or not, I have attempted to present a studied analysis of the application of spirituality to real experience. This has nothing to do with Religion.  

Siphiwe Baleka’s Sorcery Dominates 1st International Masters Swimming Championships

public.jpeg

Siphiwe Baleka’s Sorcery Dominates First Day of Competition at 1st International Masters Swimming Championships

Cairo, Egypt - Siphiwe Baleka dominated the competition at the 1st International Masters Swimming Championships held at the Heliopolis Sporting Club in Al Shorouq, Egypt just outside of Cairo. He won the 50 M Backstroke, the 50 M Freestyle and the 50 M Breaststroke, all in times faster than the Egyptian National Record for the Men’s 45-49 age group. Baleka won all three races by more than two body lengths.

It wasn’t his performance in the pool, however, that received the most attention. All eyes were on Baleka because he painted his body in traditional African decorations. Perhaps this was the first time that anyone had ever displayed such African culture in the history of competitive swimming. When asked why he did this, Baleka said, “DNA testing shows that my Balanta ancestors were the first people to settle in what is called Egypt today long before the pyramids were built. I wanted  to honor them.” 

public.jpeg

Baleka was the lone swimmer from the United States to compete against 394 swimmers from ten countries. When asked why he chose to compete in this event, Baleka said, 

“I have wanted to be a professional athlete since I was a boy. Just because I am 48, I don’t have to give up on that dream. A lot more money is coming into swimming now. World ranked athletes get salaries. Now there is the ISL. Even para-Olympians get major sponsorships. So why not masters swimmers? I want to travel around the world and compete against the best, too. Like Michael Andrews, I want to win all the sprint races in all four strokes. Like Michael Phelps, I want to win 8 gold medals at a meet like Masters World Championships. So I have to find a way to do it. I didn’t have enough money to go to both the FINA Masters World Championships in Gwanju, Korea and this event this year, so I had to make a choice. Here you have an international championship on the African continent and I am the only black swimmer. There’s something wrong with that and we all know why. I decided my presence and world class performance would be more significant on the African continent. MySwimPro let me use their platform to promote a fundraising campaign. My fans raised $3,000 so I could attend. The meet organizers hosted me and paid my in-country expenses. Arena donated a Powerskin suit and other equipment. I wanted to show that not only can blacks swim, they can win. I think I have made a statement here.”

Indeed, Baleka delivered world class performances. His time in the 50 M Backstroke, 30.52 would have been fifth in Gwanju. His 50 M Free time of 24.96 would have been second and his 50 M Breast time of 30.70 would have been 4th. “Those times are not too far from my best, so I am pleased,” Baleka said.

Baleka has three more races tomorrow including the 100 Free, 100 Breast and 50 Fly.

Return to Khuti: The Great Pyramid and Balanta

public.jpeg

“The name of the Great Pyramid was “Khuti,” which denotes seven Lights, or Glorious Ones ; it also signifies as Heru-Khuti, the Light, a symbolic representation in stone of Horus the Light of the World and all his doctrines - the doctrines and divine message given to man at this early period to read and learn what he must do and what he has to pass through to attain triumph over darkness (ignorance), so that his Soul and Spirit, after this life, may find everlasting rest and happiness in the presence of the Divine God of Light, and obtain a full knowledge of all things.


This pyramid was built by the old Stellar Cult people of Egypt, the followers of Horus called Mesinu, who were descendants of the earlier Mesenti, or followers of Horus Behutet. The proof of this is still extant.


It is stated on a parchment found in a brick wall in the foundations of Denderah at the time of King Pepi: ‘The Great Pyramid was built by the followers of Horus’, the stellar cult people were the followers of Horus in the same sense as the Christians are the followers of Christ. 


It was built by the old Her-Seshta, or the wise men of Egypt, when they had worked out their Astro-Mythology and the seven mysteries. The architect who drew the plans was Nu-Er-nub-Ari, ‘The Keeper of the Secrets.’ He was the Prince and High Priest of the Nome of ‘The Gazelle’ of Egypt. The Great Pyramid is the Ritual of the seven Mysteries written in stone in ‘Sign Language,’ to be read accurately by anyone who can read and understand this Sign Language. ‘It is an Alter to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt.’...


Herodotus states ‘that ‘Khufu’ (who has been erroneously said to be the builder by many) lived and reigned in Egypt during the Solar Cult, but that Khufu was not the builder.


Manetho, who was a High Priest of Egypt and ‘kept the Records of Egypt,’ states that the Great Pyramid was built at ‘the end of the reign of The Gods and Heroes,’ and that it was built by the followers of Horus. Moreover, he states that the Gods and Heroes were not Humans, nor ever had been Human.

public.jpeg


Here is a clear statement that the Stellar Cult people were the builders of the Great Pyramid, because these followed and were evolved from the Hero Cult people, who were Nilotic Negroes, and who came up from the South and settled in Egypt which they divided into seven Nomes, with a totem for each. According to Manetho this Hero Cult, or Cult of the Gods and Heroes, lasted 16,000 years before the Stellar Cult was evolved.


The Great Pyramid was built in the ‘Nome of the Haunch,’ this was not done without reason.” - Albert Churchward, The Origin And Evolution Of Religion.


Churchward then goes on to explain precisely what those reasons were and concludes, “as I read the evidence, it was built during the Astronomical, or Stellar Cult. The Solar Cult lasted about 100,000 years and the Lunar before this for about 50,000 years. The Stellar Cult was anterior to these, and lasted at least 300,000 years; how much longer it is impossible to say, but from remains found of the Stellar Cult people in Pliocene Strata formations they were in existence at least 600,000 years ago. 


If we take the length of the Great Year as 25,827 and divide the total into seven equal parts this gives 3,689 years as the time for the pole star to rest in each of the seven signs, which was recorded by successive Priests as they watched through the great tube (of the Great Pyramid), year after year....

Precession_animation_small_new.gif
Outside_view_of_precession.jpg

On 11600 B.C. the Pole was represented by the last of the seven Pole Stars in the Constellation of The Man (Heracles). Thus, the myth of the destruction of the human race was founded upon the astronomical base. All the previous deluges were the destruction of the totemic tortoises, jackals, vultures, swans, and apes, crocodiles and hippopotami, that is when one or other of the pole stars representing one of these Zootypes submerged and have place to the next in procession; but the seventh and last represented ‘the Man’, so all these men were mythically destroyed when the submergence of this Pole Star took place: to recommence again another Great Year....

public.jpeg


The Pole Star being a star that did not set in the course of the Great Year, there would be seven of these which never set, and they became in one phase the lords of eternity, the seven watchers, the seven glorious ones called the Khuti, the seven judges, the seven lights on one stand (the pole), or the candlestick with seven branches, and various other types; thus the seven servants (seshu) Khuti, Uraes-Gods, saluting seven apes or angels, spirits, or lamps of fire, are depicted round the throne of God according to the mystery of the seven stars in Revelation, But it was not until the time of the Solar Cult (at the time of Ptah) that the seventh Pole Star was imaged as ‘the Man’ in Polaris....


During the whole of the Stellar and Lunar cults there was no Heracles the Man imaged, or depicted - only Zootype forms. Thus, the last of the seven Pole Stars in procession forming the last Great Year lost its place as Polaris 11,600 years ago, and it will be about 14,227 years more before it resumes its place in precession as Polaris. There are records extant left by the Stellar Cult people of ten great years; no record of time could be made until the Great Pyramid was built and the Priests had carefully recorded the time accurately in the precession of the seven Pole Stars- by observation year after year, as seen and noted through the great tube which was built to observe and record time. It would have been impossible to obtain accuracy otherwise.


Therefore it must have been built at least 269,870 years ago. This may be difficult for some people to believe but ‘Records of the Past’ prove it....


The whole of the building of the Great Pyramid is the Ritual portrayed in Stone of the seven Primal Mysteries, the depiction of the Astronomical Stellar Cult Religion. The explanation of all was known only to the old Her-Seshta or Mystery Teachers....”


WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BALANTA PEOPLE?

public.jpeg


That will be explained in part 2.



ON QUESTIONS OF RACE, ETHNICITY AND NATIONALITY

overview of slave trade.jpg

1.       Various peoples from the African continent were kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved in the territories that became the United States of America. Are the descendants of those people living in the United States today still African? To answer this question, it is important to clarify in what aspect is meant “still African”. Who or what is “African”?

 

a)       First of all, let’s consider who it was that is being referenced. Let’s think about the person that was put in chains, survived the middle passage and brought to the Americas. Was that person “African”? In what sense? Here, I can only speak on what I know. So, let me paint a picture. My great, great, great, great, great grandfather was captured and brought to the Carolinas in the late 1750’s. His father was a cattle herder and rice farmer living along what is today called the Cacheu River. If you were to ask him about his identity, he would tell you that he was a b’alante b’ndang of the B’urassa people. That was his identity. That was his concept of himself. That was his being. He did not know anything about this thing called “African”. So the very question of this debate, as posed, makes no sense to my 6th generation great grandfather. HE was not AFRICAN. He was a member of the B’Urassa people. Other people refer to the B’urassa as Balanta. In this sense then, I will reinterpret the question at hand to fit MY understanding and my circumstances. In short – am I still B’urassa?

 

b)      The answer to this question is very simple and my seven-year-old son can answer this. Let’s start from a basic, common sense understanding that anyone can understand.

 

c)       YOU ARE ALL YOUR ANCESTORS – You (every single person reading this) is the union of your mother and father. That’s how you got here. Your father planted his seed in your mother’s womb, she nurtured it for nine months, and then you were born. Every human being that has ever lived was born from the union of male and female. The very BLOOD that circulates in your body was given to you from your mother and father. The very LIFE FORCE energy, the BREATH OF LIFE, and the GENETIC INSTRUCTIONS that are responsible for the life that you have – you received all of it from your mother and father. Therefore, your mother and father live inside of you. Because this is also true of your mother and father – that their mother and father live inside of them – then it is also true that your grandparents – their blood, their life force energy, their breath of life, and their genetic instructions, also live inside of you. From this it follows, that ALL your ancestors live inside of you. Your blood, your life force energy, your breath and your genetic makeup are shared by all the ancestors living inside of you. Therefore, your life is not your own. ALL your ancestors depend on you for their existence.

 

d)      Genetic testing through African Ancestry shows that my paternal ancestry is a 100% match with Balanta. So here is definitive, scientific proof, the answer to the question. Yes, I am still B’urassa and all of my sons and male descendants after me will also be B’urassa.

 

e)      There are, however, other aspects to the question we are debating, since the spirit of the questions goes beyond just genetics and into other areas such as culture as well as such things as legal status. So let’s deal with the issue of legal status.

 

f)        My great, great, great, great, great grandfather, before he was captured, was a very young boy in the B’urassa age group of Nwatch. His father was a  b’alante b’ndang which is the head of the household and thus eligible to sit in the Council of Elders. And that’s where B’urassa state formation stops. B’urassa were a stateless society by intention because they understood state formations created inequality. So, at the time of capture, my great, great, great, great, great grandfather was the son of a sovereign head of household.

 

g)       Now the question is: what was his legal status upon arrival in the Carolinas? The answer is simple – he was a prisoner of war. The B’urassa were at war against the Mandingo of the Kaabu empire which were the biggest man-hunters in the area. The B’urassa were also at war with the Portuguese, English and Dutch slave traders. My great, great, great, great, great grandfather did not relinquish his “B’urassa” identity or status upon arrival in the Carolinas. He was, however, designated by the name “George”. I will use this name temporarily because I do not know his B’urassa name. Remember, George, like most B’urassa that were captured, was a young boy. He had not advanced through any of the age grade initiations that formally teach B’urassa culture.  George fathered a son who was called Jack around 1789. Was Jack still B’urrassa? Good question. Genetically speaking, the answer is yes. We already answered that. Legally, Jack’s status (under international law) was “a B’urassa prisoner of war”. Culturally is where we start to have questions, and then there is also spirituality, another aspect. George was brought to the Carolinas before there was a nation known as The United States of America. Jack was born after the formation of the United States of America, so legally, Jack was a B’urassa prisoner of war in the United States of America. In 1819, Jack had a son that was designated by the name Yancey Blake. Was Yancey still B’urassa? Genetically, yes. Legally, in 1819 he wasn’t a citizen of the United States, so he was still a B’urassa prisoner of war. Culturally, he was best described as a slave – he had a slave culture. He neither lived in the B’urassa culture of his grandfathers, nor did he live in the culture of his slave owner. In this sense, he was neither American, nor, as the question has been posed, African. More difficult to answer, however is the question of his spirituality. I can address this later.

Dred Scott Case.JPG

This Dred Scott Supreme Court decision attempted to settle the legal status of slaves in free territories to avert a civil war, but it provoked one instead. Dred Scott, who was born a slave in Missouri, traveled with his master to the free territory of Illinois. As a result, Scott later sued his master for freedom, which the lower courts usually granted. However, when the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, it ruled that Scott would remain a slave because as such he was not a citizen and could not legally sue in the federal courts. Moreover, in the words of Chief Justice Roger Taney, black people free or slave could never become U. S. citizens and they “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The dissenting justices pointed out that in some states people of color were already considered citizens when the Constitution was ratified. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision by granting citizenship to all those born in the United States, regardless of color. But was the 14th Amendment a “grant” of citizenship?

h)      1865, the year of Emancipation, is the critical point of departure. No African who was taken captive and transported against his will to the Americas ever renounced their tribal identification and status vis-à-vis their original "citizenship". From 1444 up until Emancipation, all Africans held in slavery were not considered citizens of in the country of their captivity. The legal status of Africans in America after the Emancipation is undetermined. According to Imari Abubakari Obadele (founder of the Republic of New Africa):

"We are not American citizens... the Fourteenth Amendment, in an attempt to bestow citizenship upon the African newly freed from slavery, incorporated the rule of jus soli, 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States and of the state wherein they reside.' A sound principle of international law, the rule of jus soli was obviously intended to provide American citizenship for persons born in the United States through what might be termed 'acceptable accidents' of birth. Thus, a person born in the US as a result of his parents' having come to this country voluntarily -- through emigration and settlement or vacation travel or business -- could not be denied citizenship in the country of his birth. He might have dual citizenship, gaining also the citizenship of his parents, but he could not be left with no citizenship. His birth in the US under such conditions would meet the test of an "acceptable accident."

By contrast, however, the presence of the African in America could by no stretch of justice be deemed 'an acceptable accident' of birth. The African, whose freedom was now acknowledged by his former slavemasters through the Thirteenth Amendment, was not on this soil because he or his parents had come vacationing or seeking some business advantage. Rather the African -- standing forth now as a free man because the Thirteenth Amendment forbade whites (who had the power, not the right) to continue slavery -- was on American soil as a result of having been kidnapped and brought here AGAINST his will.

What the rule of jus soli demanded at this point -- at the point of the passage of the slavery-halting Thirteenth Amendment -- was that America not deny to this African, born on American soil, American citizenship -- IF THE AFRICAN WANTED IT. This last condition is crucial: the African, his freedom now acknowledged by persons who theretofore had wrongfully and illegally (under international law) held him in slavery by force, was entitled as a free man to decide for himself what he wanted to do -- whether he wished to be an American citizen or follow some other course.

The rule of jus soli, in protecting the kidnapped African from being left without any citizenship, could operate so far as to impose upon America the obligation to offer the African (born on American soil) American citizenship; it could not impose upon the African -- a victim of kidnapping and wrongful transportation -- an obligation to accept such citizenship. Such an imposition would affront justice, by conspiring with the kidnappers and illegal transporters, and wipe out the free man's newly acquired freedom.

Thus, the Fourteenth Amendment is incorrectly read when its Section One is deemed to be a grant of citizenship: it can only be an offer. The positive tone of the language can only emphasize the intention of the ratifiers to make a sincere offer. On the other hand, the United States government, under obligation to make the offer. also had the power to create the mechanism – a plebiscite-- whereby the African could make an informed decision, an informed acceptance or rejection of the offer of American citizenship. Indeed, Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment makes clear that Congress could pass whatever law was necessary to make real the offer of Section One. (Section Five says, 'The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.)

The first 'appropriate legislation' required at that moment -- and still required - was that which would make possible for the now free African an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

Let us recall that, following the Thirteenth Amendment, four natural options were the basic right of the African. First, he did, of course, have a right, if he wished it, to be an American citizen. Second, he had a right to return to Africa or (third) go to another country -- if he could arrange his acceptance. Finally, he had a right (based on a claim to land superior to the European's, sub- ordinate to the Indian's) to set up an independent nation of his own.

Towering above all other juridical requirements that faced the African in America and the American following the Thirteenth Amendment was the requirement to make real the opportunity for choice, for self-determination. How was such an opportunity to evolve? Obviously, the African was entitled to full and accurate information as to his status and the principles of international law appropriate to his situation. This was all the more important because the African had been victim of a long-term intense slavery policy aimed at assuring his illiteracy, dehumanizing him as a group and depersonalizing him as an individual.

The education offered him after the Thirteenth Amendment confirmed the policy of dehumanization. It was continued in American institutions . . . for 100 years, through 1965. Now, again following the Thirteenth Amendment, the education of the African in America seeks to base African self-esteem on how well the African assimilates white American folk-ways and values Worse, the advice given the African concerning his rights under international law suggested that there was no option open to him other than American citizenship. For the most part, he was co-opted into spending his political energies in organizing and participating in constitutional conventions and then voting for legislatures which subsequently approved the Fourteenth Amendment. In such circumstances, the presentation of the Fourteenth Amendment to state legislatures for whose members the African had voted, and the Amendment's subsequent approval by these legislatures, could in no sense be considered a plebiscite.


The fundamental requirements were lacking: first, adequate and accurate information for the advice given the freedman was so bad it amounted to fraud, a second stealing of our birthright; second, a chance to choose among the four options: (1) US citizenship, (2) return to Africa, (3) emigration to another country and (4) the creation of a new African nation on American soil.

On the other hand, the United States government still has the obligation under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to ‘enforce' Section One (the offer of citizenship) in the only way it could be rightfully 'enforced' -- by authorizing US participation in a plebiscite. By, in other words, a reference to our own will, our self-determined acceptance or rejection of the offer of citizenship. There are further important ramifications. A genuine plebiscite implies that if people vote against US citizenship, the means must be provided to facilitate whatever decision they do make. Thus, persons who vote to return to Africa or to emigrate elsewhere must have the means to do so. . . .

Now then, we repeat: an obvious and important ramification of the plebiscite is that there must exist the capability of putting its decisions into effect. If the decision is for US citizenship, then that citizenship must be unconditional. If it is for emigration to a country outside Africa, those persons making this choice must have transportation resources and reparations in terms of other benefits, principally money, to make such emigration possible and give it a reasonable chance of success. If the decision is for a return to some country in Africa, the person must have those same reparations as persons emigrating to countries outside Africa PLUS those additional reparations necessary to restore enough of the African personality for the individual to have a reasonable chance of success in integrating into African society in the motherland. If, finally, the decision is for an independent new African nation on this soil, then the reparations must be those agreed upon between the United States government and the new African government. Reparations must be at least sufficient to assure the new nation a reasonable chance of solving the great problems imposed upon us by the Americans in our status as a colonized people."

i)        After 1865 and the 13th and 14th Amendments, our legal status in the United States of America became “colonized people through forced integration.” This is your/our current legal status until one makes an informed free choice, an informed acceptance or rejection of the citizenship offer.

IF YOU DID NOT KNOW AND UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLE OF JUS SOLI AND THE LEGAL REQUIREMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO CONDUCT A PLEBISCITE FOR THE EXERCISE OF SELF DETERMINATION, THEN YOU DID NOT MAKE AN INFORMED FREE CHOICE, AN INFORMED ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF THE CITIZENSHIP OFFER. THUS, YOUR AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP, IS NULL AND VOID UNLESS YOU WAIVE YOUR RIGHT TO MAKING A FREE AND INFORMED ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF THE OFFER.

 

j)        So at this point, we have systematically proven that genetically speaking I am still B’urassa. Legally speaking, I never renounced my B’urassa status (knowledge of which was taken from me through the process of terroristic brainwashing) and I never made a valid acceptance of American citizenship, so I am not American. Properly speaking, I am a B’urassa colonized through forced integration in the United States of America. Culturally, I am neither B’urassa (knowledge of which was taken from me through the process of terroristic brainwashing) nor American. By American, I mean, I don’t practice white supremacy. My culture is what is properly referred to as #ADOS – American Descendants of Slaves. Here, American refers to location, not ethnicity, consciousness, spirituality or nationality.

 

k)       Spiritually, I am neither Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or any of the most well-known organized religions, nor have I ever been a member of any of their churches. The only organized religion or spirituality that I ever identified with and attended services for was Rastafari. However, I left the Rastafari movement and after discovering and studying my B’urassa ancestry, I have come to learn that spiritually, I am still B’urassa.

 

l)        So now I have answered the question(s) at hand. I am neither on paper nor in actual practice, American nor African. Genetically and spiritually, I am still B’urassa. Legally, I am a B’urassa colonized through forced integration in the United States of America, and culturally I am #ADOS (because of the process of terroristic brainwashing).

 

m)    CONCERNING THE QUESTION OF PAN AFRICANISM – In the past, because knowledge of our ancestral identities was erased through the process of terroristic brainwashing, many #ADOS have searched for an identity. Until the advent of genetic testing, for the vast majority of #ADOS, we could only learn that we came from “somewhere in Africa”. As a result, the entire continent of Africa became our identities, a place holder for our actual, SPECIFIC ancestral lineages. As a result, we built bonds with all the people of the African continent, and in particular, with those who shared the trans-Atlantic slavery experience. This bonding, based on this level of knowledge of self, formed the Pan African movement. However, I am a new kind of Pan Africanist. My Pan Africanism is not built on a sentimental feeling of a vague understanding of my relationship to the African continent. I know who I am and I know my history. I have written three volumes on my family history dating back to 42,000 BCE and am finishing the 4th and final volume entitled Balanta B’urassa My Sons: Those Who Resist Remain. My new Pan Africanism is based on the fact that I believe that knowing my history, our history, we can tell the truth, acknowledge our mistakes so that we don’t make them again. For example, my brother Foday is Temne and his ancestors were part of the Soninke or Mali Empires. When we discuss how his ancestors oppressed my ancestors, he apologized on behalf of his ancestor for what they did to my ancestors. We realize that BOTH of our ancestors ended up enslaved here in the United States because we did not have the advantage of understanding the threat against us. Now we do and now we see the pitfalls of not uniting against this threat. So we can be proud of our ancestral heritages and work together in better-informed Pan Africanism without falling into the pitfalls of tribalism. We can also empathize with each other about the experience of both losing and regaining our specific ancestral lineages. Once everyone knows WHO they are and WHOSE they are, then that truth can provide the answers to the questions we have today surrounding the who, what, where, when and how of REPARATIONS and how we will work with each other. There is no conflict between #ADOS and Pan Africanism once everyone knows their specific ancestral lineages.

 

n)      AND THIS IS THE REASON WHY I AM ISSUING THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE REPARATIONS MOVEMENT.

 

1.       Because the purpose of any reparations is to repair, then the first action requires answering, "Repair to what?" - What was the condition before the injustice that needs to be repaired?

 

THEREFORE, THE FIRST STEP IN REPARATIONS is to train and develop a professional class of African American genealogy researchers and deploy them as part of a modern day government Workers Project that will go throughout the United States and determine the genetic ancestry and family history of every black person claiming to be the descendants of slaves.

 

Because I have done this myself for my family, and reconstructed our family history for the last 18,000 years, including the first encounter with Europeans and their capture by Mandinka slave traders of the Kaabu empire who sold them to Luso Africans (mixed breed Portuguese and African) slave traders who then sold them to English rice planters in South Carolina (names are known), I know what it takes to do such a research project. The first step is removing the "negro problem" - getting rid of an identity that is not established in historical fact. Upon arrival in America, black victims of human trafficking were terrorized into forgetting their names, their language, their culture, and knowledge of where they come from. As the movie clip shows, not knowing yourself, only knowing yourself as "negro" or "black" or "from somewhere in Africa" is the continuing legacy of slavery. . . .

It is now the 21st century and the science, the tools, and the means for repairing this exist today. At this point, the government needs to provide, free of charge, maternal and paternal dna testing through the company African Ancestry as well as a professional genealogy case manager to work with each person to re-establish their historical ancestry. This is step #1

Every college and university should have a special program for training this class of genealogy researches and all African American students entering the program should be granted free tuition and a living stipend for four years of study. Within ten to fifteen years, every African American could then have their ancestral identity restored. This would then become the basis for further reparations. The process itself feeds several birds with one seed - a significant number of black students would be able to attend college free of charge with a useful vocation and guaranteed employment (through the government program) that is directly related to the "repairing" of the African American community.

THE SECOND STEP IS THEN USING THE SAME TECHNOLOGY AND WORKFORCE TO CALCULATE WHO OWNED WHO AND HOW MUCH WEALTH WAS CREATED AND STOLEN.

I suggest everyone start by reading Daina Ramey Berry's book, The Price For Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a NationTop of Form

 

A note to #ADOS– go back to “i)” and consider carefully. The way #ADOS is proceeding, they are waving their right to make a free and informed rejection of the citizenship offer. By waving this right, #ADOS is ceding valuable legal territory. In the same way that #ADOS founder Antonio Moore has done his homework when it comes to the economic and wealth aspects of Reparations, he must also do his legal homework lest he compromise other allies doing that aspect of REPARATIONS work. Essentially, #ADOS must make it clear – are they advocating integration into America or liberation from America? I am without question a liberationist and not an integrationist. I recommend that #ADOS add to its platform the demand for a US Sponsored Plebiscite while educating #ADOS that the movement is not divisive on this question – it is not an either/or choice. All 4 natural options are valid and must be provided for – 1) those who want to integrate into America; 2) those who want to return to their ancestral homelands; 3) those that want to form a new nation of their own on land that is currently within the United States of America; and 4) those that want to emigrate to some other country. We need not fight amongst ourselves on this question. We respect each person’s right of self-determination, but we struggle or the provisions for ALL FOUR OPTIONS EQUALLY.

Reflection and citizenship (article reposted from Facebook by Nafanda Cidadão Camais)

GB Flag.JPG

In my opinion achieving a political system that can suit our socio-political realities, could be a valid alternative to this vicious cycle of chronic instability that parents have been immersed for more than two decades and without end the view.

Socially Guinea-Bissau is a mosaic of different sensitivity, although "Virtual" in my opinion.
With more than 20 ethnic groups each with its own identity (language, uses and customs, etc) the democratic fragility known until today, suffers from a logical evidence of what the system or semi-Presidential plagiarism that copy from Portugal, perhaps Do not be suitable at this time for Guinea-Bissau due to the very structure of guinean society itself

So making a deep reflection on how to act to turn this jinx would be a serious challenge for each of us..

That said and by the structural similarity of the two societies, I usually define guinea-Bissau from the point of view of social composition as a "Miniature" of United States of America, and consequently i also believe that a similar political system but not equal to Of them, it could help break this vicious cycle of our instability

Now the understood of political and social sciences, here are matters to discuss.

Chances:

1. Assumption Number 1 would be that political parties would have to be groups on the basis of the social or ideology policies that they defend, which are

Right, center, left.

2. All parties would be required to sign a certificate of their ideology in the supreme court before the general elections.

3. of the parties that defend
The same policies should be a consensual leader through internal interim elections without state costs.

4 In the end we would have only two groups of parties fighting for the general elections, expense by

5. Whoever won, elect a president of the republic and this in turn forms his own government.
So in one election we would have the president of the republic and Prime Minister of the same

Let's go to

Cbnf

A Swimmer's Race: https://myswimpro.com/blog/2019/08/06/a-swimmers-race/

This post is guest-written by MySwimPro Ambassador Siphiwe Baleka. Support his swim at the 2019 International Swimming Masters Championships in Cairo, Egypt by donating to his GoFundMe page.

DON'T LET THEM FOOL YOU! BLACKS CAN SWIM. WE HAVE ALWAYS SWAM. AND IT SAVED OUR LIVES THE FIRST TIME WE ENCOUNTERED THE PORTUGUESE.

Gomes Eannes de Azurara’s account of the Portuguese’s first arrival in the land of Guinea (in the land of the Balanta), 1445 AD

"And therefore he armed a very fine caravel, and the captaincy of this he bestowed on his nephew, named Alvaro Fernandez, whom the Infant had brought up in his household,.... And he was not to hinder himself by making raids in the land of the Moors, but to take his way straight to the land of the Negroes.... From thence they went forward until they passed Cape Verde, beyond which they decried an island (Goree). . . . Thence they went forward to the spot where the palm tree is . . . . And when they were near to the Cape as it might be a third of a league, they cast anchor and rested as they had arranged; but they had not been there long when from the land there set out two boats, manned by ten Guineas, who straightaway began to make their way direct to the ship, like men who came in peace....from this it seemed to them that they could easily capture them. And with this design there put off six boats with thirty-five or forty of their company prepared like men who meant to fight....And the Guineas stayed some way off until one of their boats took courage to move more forward and issued forth from the others towards the caravel, and in it were five brave and stout Guineas, distinguished in this respect among the others of the company. And as soon as Alvaro Fernandez perceived that this boat was already in position for him to be able to reach it before it could receive help from the others, he ordered his own to issue forth quickly and go against it. And by the great advantage of our men in their manner of rowing they were soon upon the enemy, who seeing themselves thus overtaken, and having no hope of defense, leapt into the water while the other boats fled towards the land. But our men had very great toil in the capture of those who were swimming, for they dived like cormorants, so that they could not get a hold of them;"

African Swimmers2.JPG
African Swimmers.JPG

As one of the greatest Balanta swimmers that ever lived, I am calling on my Balanta family for some support. Please read this article and make a contribution to my Blacks Can Swim and Win campaign. I want to honor our Balanta ancestors who came from the Nile Valley where they first learned to swim! We have raised $2,380 of the $3,000 fundraising goal. https://www.gofundme.com/manage/blacks-can-swim-and-win

On October 4th and 5th of 2019, I hope to compete in the most important swimming race of my life. This race is more important to me than the 1989 Illinois High School State Swimming Championships in which, as the #1 seed in the 200 I.M., I ended up finishing fourth.

It is more important than the YMCA National Championships and the Junior National Championships in which I made the finals in every event that I swam but failed to win any event. More important than the 1991 and 1992 Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships where I swam on winning, record-setting relays and made the All-Ivy League Team in the 100 Freestyle.

More important than the legendary inaugural Harvard -Yale -Princeton (HYP) tri meet that we (Yale) won to clinch the Ivy League title. More important than the 1991 US Open in which I failed to qualify for the 1992 US Olympic Trials by 0.8 seconds.

And more important than the USMS National Championships in which I have won thirteen individual titles or the 2017 FINA Masters Swimming World Championships in which I won four silver medals.

What swimming competition can be more important than any of those?

Let me explain. This is not your typical swimming article because my story is not a typical swimming story.

Two things have dominated my life: swimming and race(ism). I was born and raised in the all-white subdivision of Boulder Hill, in Oswego, Illinois. My family was one of two black families in the community. In 1976 when I was just five years old, a book was published called Roots: The Saga of an American Family. That same year, a blonde hair, blue-eyed boy and his friends called me a racial slur and hit me with a broken metal bar from the bicycle rack (we later became teammates on the football team in high school). The book was made into a TV movie in 1977 and viewed by 130 million people in America, including myself.

After Roots came on television, I did not want to go to school. This was the first time I became aware that there was a difference between black people and white people. And the white people were more powerful. This is called white supremacy. As a result, black people were made to feel less important, less intelligent, and inferior. Somewhere inside me, I felt ashamed, but I also felt that I would prove that I am not inferior.

In 1978, a lifeguard at the Boulder Hill Civic Center named David Stevens saw me playing with the other kids and asked me to swim across the pool. I did, and then he asked me to do it again but this time on my back. I did that and he told me to come to the pool the next morning at 7:00 am. And just like that, I joined the Oswego Park District Lil’ Devils Swim Team. I hated the cold water, but I now earned the coveted red and white striped speedo swimsuit that all the swim team members wore. I was “on the team.”

The following year, I was winning all the summer league races and setting team records. Whatever inferiority complex that racism was fostering, swimming was doing the opposite. Swimming races gave me confidence, a sense of achievement and pride. It also made me feel accepted. Everyone on the team was happy when our relay won or our team won and I was included in that happiness. Coach Dave, who later qualified for both the US Olympic Swimming and Triathlon Trials, instilled in me the desire to work hard in the pool and become the best I could be.

In 1980 I joined the Aurora YMCA Sharks swimming team in order to swim all year. By 1981 I was the Illinois YMCA State Champion in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 1:00.68. Around that same time, at school we were reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Naturally, I identified with the heroes of the story, and so when the teacher asked who wanted to read the parts of Tom or Huck, I rose my hand. One of the students in the class said, “You can’t be Huck. You have to be N***** Jim”.  Can you imagine being the only black kid in class and reading a book which uses this racial slur more than 200 times? These were the kind of onslaughts to my psyche that I suffered everyday as a kid. But everyday I also went to swim practice. For me, the pool was an equalizer. If you were fast and you were helping the team win, you were respected and liked. My teammates were my friends. Ironically, in a sport that, at that time, was mostly all-white (and mostly still true today) I never felt out of place or inferior. 

After winning several events at the age of 14 at the Ohio Valley Championships in 1985, I gave my first interview to a newspaper.  The article stated, “An articulate youngster who smiles easily, Blake has no problem explaining his decision to forgo the more traditional sports that black youngsters participate in. ‘I play all the sports, but I like swimming the most. It’s just fun, especially when you win. It’s a good way to stay in shape. Besides, all my friends swim… Swimming is probably what I am best at. I get more satisfaction out of it, I want to get a scholarship, that’s the first thing.’”

Two years later, just days before my 16th birthday, on April 6, 1987, Al Campanis told Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel that blacks can’t swim because we lacked buoyancy. 

That year I was ranked in the top 16 in the nation in the 100 freestyle. The success in the pool sustained my esteem, earned me status among my peers, and created opportunities for me. In 1988, the swimmers at the Illinois Swimming State Championships voted me to be one of their two athlete representatives to United States Swimming. My senior year in high school, I was recruited by scores of NCAA Division 1 schools. I applied to just six schools – Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, The University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia. I was accepted at all six. Was it because I was super smart? Probably not. I graduated only 9th in my class of just over 300 students. My SAT verbal score was in the 85th percentile, my math score was 91%. I did a little better on the ACT test, scoring in the 97%. That’s not enough to get you into those schools. Why did they accept me? It was because of the swimming. But it was also because of my race. Division 1 caliber black swimmers were a rarity – just a handful of us at the time like Tim Jackson and Byron Davis. Accepting me, these schools got a two-for-one: a great swimmer and a diversity-quota-filling black student. Here, the intersection of my swimming and my race, helped me.

The January 26th, 2015 issue of Sports Illustrated told the rest of my collegiate swimming story.  That article also told another part of my story, how I had an identity crisis and left Yale and traveled around the world. Describing that experience, I told Jon Wertheim, author of the article, “I didn’t feel like I knew who I was. I didn’t know my history. Like a lot of African-Americans, we don’t know our past. All of a sudden, connecting with my ancestral heritage became very important.”

So, I traveled to Ghana, Benin, and Togo. I lived in Ethiopia for a year. According to Wertheim, Yale swimming coach Frank Keefe “recalls meeting Blake for lunch that semester and doing a double take when his former star walked into the diner. ‘He was a Rastafarian,’ Keefe said. He said that he wanted to be the national swim coach of Ethiopia”. It was true. When I went to Ethiopia in 2003, I discovered that the Gihon hotel in Addis Ababa had an Olympic-sized swimming pool with no water in it. At altitude! Immediately I thought of the boys I saw at Lake Tana, the source of the Nile. They grew up around water. They were natural swimmers. What if I took them and trained them to become the world’s best long-distance swimmers? I did not think this was a crazy idea. They had already proved they were the best long-distance runners. All I had to do was get a group of boys from eight to ten years old and coach them for the next twenty years. They had the advantage of living and training at altitude. I planned to fund it by offering high altitude training camps in this “exotic” location for American college swimming teams which are allowed one foreign trip every four years. I met with the Ethiopian Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture and discussed my idea. In my mind, if Michael Phelps really wanted to go to the next level and transform the sport of swimming – taking the poorest country in the world, and making black, Ethiopians the best swimmers in the world – he would help me finance this.

In 2007, I returned to South Africa. While there, a council of elders explained to me that whenever a “son of the soil” returns home after a long journey, he receives a new name. Having journeyed far and long, the person returns as a “new” man, thus requiring a “new” name. The elders told me that while I was on ancestral soil, my ancestors required that I have an ancestral name that they could call. Thus, the elders gave me the name “Siphiwe” which means “gift of the creator” and the surname Baleka which means “fast” and “he who escaped”. This was profoundly important to me. In the movie Roots, the main character Kunte Kinte, when brought to America, was stripped and tied to a post where he was whipped until he gave up his name and acknowledged that his new name was “Toby”, the name given to him by the slave master.

At Yale, where I started to study African American history, I learned that most slaves took the names of their slave masters. All of a sudden, my birth name, Anthony “Tony” Blake, started to really bother me. Why did I, a black person, have a Spanish or Italian first name and an English surname when I am neither Spanish, Italian or English? Why, now that I am “free”, did I continue to use the foreign names of slave-owners? This was part of my identity crisis that started back in 1977 when I watched the movie Roots. Thus, when I returned to the United States, I had my name legally changed to Siphiwe Baleka in order to honor my ancestors.

On September 28, 2010, I received my genetic DNA results from African Ancestry. My paternal DNA was a 100% match with the Balanta people in Guinea Bissau. Since then, I have researched my Balanta ancestry and discovered that they originated in East Africa.  Haplogroup E1b1a is a direct basal branch of Y-chromosome haplogroup E-V38 which originated in the Horn of Africa about 42,300 years before the present. Further research showed that these ancestors of mine migrated down the Nile River and settled a place called Wadi Kubbaniya in modern day Sudan around 18,500 BC.  Research also showed that they continued to migrate down the Nile River and established the first city called Nekhen. By 3200 BC, they had migrated into what is called Upper and Lower Egypt and settled the first areas called Nuits or Nomes. The 13th Nuit/Nome that my ancestors settled was called Iunu. In the Bible, it is called “On”. The Greeks called it “Heliopolis” and today, the city is called Cairo. 

On October 4-5, 2019, the Heliopolis Sporting Club in Cairo, Egypt will be hosting the 1st International Swimming Masters Championships. Now you can understand why competing in this event is so important to me. For the first time, the world’s best Masters Swimmers are going to compete in Africa, in the very city that my ancestors founded. It is important to me that one of the descendants of the city’s original founders – me – not only competes but wins. To be honest, I get upset whenever I see that the “African Swimmer of the Year” is in fact, of European origin. This year, Ed Acura gained attention with his short movie, A Film Called Blacks Can’t Swim. I want to make my contribution, my statement, that not only can blacks swim, we can win! I think it is important that one of the champions at this inaugural competition, is a black swimmer. I think it can inspire a new generation of young swimmers as well as adult swimmers on the continent of Africa.

As a boy, I wanted to be a professional athlete.  However, there was no opportunity for professional swimming back then. That is changing. Swimmers like Michael Andrew are making a living traveling around the world and competing. This was my dream. It still is. Just because I am a 48-year old Masters swimmer doesn’t mean I have to give up on this dream. I, too, can travel around the world and compete and try to prove I am the fastest in the world. However, right now, there is no money in Masters Swimming. There’s very little sponsorship and definitely no prize money. But we have to start somewhere. I’m going to need help. 

I have already made arrangements to travel to Guinea Bissau this December. It will be the first time in 269 years that anyone from my family has returned to reconnect with our Balanta relatives. This is a true, Alex Haley Roots’ type reunion for me. Honoring the ancestors is one of the most important aspects of Balanta culture. The only thing that could make this year even better is if I could also return to my family’s most ancient and original ancestral homeland and honor them by doing what I do best – compete in and win a swimming race. 

To do this, I need to raise a little money. Please go to my GoFundMe page and make a contribution. The meet organizers have promised that if I bring five swimmers with me, they will pay my in-country expenses, so if you would like to join me, please contact me and let me know.

I want to thank MySwimPro for supporting me, sponsoring me, and helping me to truly be a MySwim “Pro”.

Sincerely,

Siphiwe Baleka