Feature Article : "The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Modernghana.com."

Femi Akomolafe

May 2009 dealt the world of Pan-Africanism a cruel double blow. The pitiless hands of death plucked two bright stars from the dwindling Africa's constellation. First came the news from Kenya that the indefatigable African warrior, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, has died in a car crash.

Following in the footsteps of Garvey, Nkrumah, Anta Diop et al, this self-less and untiring fighter for African Rights and progress died on the 25th of May. He was on another assignment for mother Africa when his car crashed at about 1:00AM while rushing to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. He was scheduled to fly to attend a conference in Rwanda when he met his untimely death.

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem spent 20 of his 48 years agitating and advocating for Africa. He was a regular commentator on Africa affairs and was general secretary of the Pan-African movement and chairman of the Center for Democracy and Development.

Africans were still reeling from that terrible news when it was announced that Professor Ivan Sertima has also joined the ancestors. And he died on the same day that Tajudeen passed on. He was 74 and had suffered from Alzheimer.

Ivan Van Sertima was born January 26, 1935, in Kitty, Guyana, the former British colony home of another great African scholar, Walter Rodney, whose classic 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,' remains a seminal work on how Europe's plunder contributed to Africa's economic retardation.

Professor van Serima was a multi-discipline scholar who addressed topics in literature, linguistics, anthropology and history. Fluent in Swahili and Hungarian, van Sertima had his education in Britain where he worked for several years as a journalist. In 1972 he joined the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey where he taught for about three decades at the department of Africana studies. He was a historian, linguist and anthropologist and was editor of the African Journal of Civilisation. He's renowned for his pan-Africanism stand and noted for his Afrocentric theory of pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas.

Van Sertima wrote extensively on Africa's contribution to world's civilization. He was also among the leading proponents that the Ancient Egyptians were black and his 1976 book “They Came Before Columbus” became a bestseller and achieved considerable fame. The book claims prehistoric African influences in Central and South America.

In 1995, I reviewed it, this is what I wrote:
“History, as taught in the Western and Western-dominated world, gives the impression that the first Africans to reach the Americas were brought as slaves, in shackles on slaves-ships. So total is the Euro-Americans onslaught on black people that all military, missionary, scholarship and academic forces are mobilized to paint the picture of the African as an eternal slave of the white man.

In order to justify their crimes of slavery and colonialism, Europeans have constructed a web of lies and prevarication and passed them as historical truth. How else do we explain the Western historians deliberate distortion of the truth to paint the picture of a Caucasian master and an African slave - even in the Americas, where evidence abounded that black people were respected, even venerated, by the old Americans (Occidental Indians)?

So complete was the Europeans falsification of history that several people, both black and white, will be shocked to know that there were historical, archaeological, even botanical evidence of Africans contact with the New World in Pre-Colombian times. As usual, Western scholarship popularized the myth that the history of the Indians started with their 'discovery,' by the pirate, ego-tripster and genius of mass-murder, Christopher Columbus.

Happily, one by one, these edifices of distortions, constructed by white- supremacists posing as scholars, historians, anthropologists, even scientists, are being knocked down.

In his 'They Came Before Columbus,' Professor Ivan Van Sertima of Rutgers University assembled an impressive array of evidence to challenge one of the most persistent of these historical distortions. His argument are so compelling that very many high-calibre scholars, who have maintained the prejudiced line of history, are bound to fall flat from their pedestal. The style of the book is very engaging, almost novel-like - this makes a very good reading.

The first evidence of a black presence in the America was given to Columbus by the Indians themselves: they gave concrete proof to the Spanish that they were trading with black people. “The Indians of this Espanola said there had come to Espanola a black people who have the tops of their spears made of a metal which they called gua-nin, of which he [Columbus] had sent samples to the Sovereigns to have them assayed, when it was found that of 32 parts, 18 were of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper. The origin of the word guanin may be tracked down in the Mande languages of West Africa, through Mandigo, Kabunga, Toronka, Kankanka, Bambara, Mande and Vei. In Vei, we have the form of the word ka-ni which, transliterated into native phonetics, would give us gua-nin.” p.11. This was just one of the numerous instances, cited by Professor Sertima, where the names, cultures and rituals of the Mandigos confluenced with those of the ancient Americans.

Thus we have the Bambara werewolf cult whose head is known as amantigi (heads of faith) appeared in Mexican rituals as amanteca. The ceremonies accompanying these rituals are too identical to have been independently evolved among peoples who have had no previous encounter. Talking devil is called Hore in Mandigo, and Haure in Carib. In the American language of Nahuatl a waistcloth is called maxtli, in Malinke it's masiti. The female loincloth is nagua in Mexico, it is nagba in Mande.

Why would the Indians claimed to have traded with black people if they haven't? Why would their faith and language have so much infusion of West African influence if these people haven't had any contact? These might not be sufficient, in themselves, to justify the claims that Africans have been visiting the Americas in pre-Colombian times. But there are witnesses. In 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa, another Spanish usurper came upon a group of African war captives in an Indian settlement. He was told that the blacks lived nearby and were constantly waging wars. A priest, Fray Gregoria Garcia wrote an account of another encounter in a book that was silenced by the inquisition: “Here we found slaves of the lord - Negroes- who were the first our people saw in the Indies.” p.22. (It should be noted that in pre-European slavery, slaves are what we called 'Prisoners of wars' today. Thus, the Yorubas have the same word, 'ERU,' for both slaves and POWs.)

Aside from these confirmed sightings, there are also an abundance archeological evidences of Africa presence in pre-Colombian times. These were in the form of realistic portraitures of Negro-Africans in clay, gold, and stone unearthed in pre-Colombian strata in Central and South America.- pp.23- 24. Moved by these overwhelming evidences, the Society of American Archeology at a conference in 1968, Professor Sertima reported, concluded: “Surely there cannot now be any question but that there were visitors to the New World from the Old in historic or even prehistoric time before 1492.”

Then there is the oral history of the two peoples. The Griots - traditional historians and masters of orature - 'Oral Literature' in Mali, have stories about their King, Abubakari the second, grandson of Sundiata, the founder of the Mali Empire (larger than the Holy Roman Empire), who set out on a great expedition of large boats in 1311. None of the boats returned to Mali, but curiously around this time evidence of contact between West Africans and Mexicans appear in strata in America in an overwhelming combination of artifacts and cultural parallels. A black-haired, black-bearded figure in white robes, one of the representations of Quetzalcoatl, modeled on a dark-skinned outsider, appears in paintings in the valley of Mexico... while the Aztecs begin to worship a Negroid figure mistaken for their god Tezcatlipoca because he had the right ceremonial color. Negroid skeletons are found in this time stratum in the Caribbean... 'A notable tale is recorded in the Peruvian traditions ... of how black men coming from the east had been able to penetrate the Andes Mountains.'“ p.26

The voyage of Abubakari, Professor Sertima pointed out, may not be as daunting as it seems for anyone who understands the Ocean currents. These currents, which traverse the World's oceans, serve as natural marine conveyor belts. “Once you enter them you are transported (even against your will, even with no navigational skill) from one bank of the ocean to the other.”pp.22-23. Several successful attempts have been made to demonstrate that it was possible to cross the Atlantic from the Equator to South America, even in small boat.

To the scholars, blinded by racial prejudice, who maintained that the blacks were brought into the Americas as slaves by Phoenicians, Professor Sertima posed the question: “Why would a people as sophisticated as the Indians built temples, shrines and statues to honor slaves, and none to the supposed masters? Indeed why would a people considered so lowly be venerated at all?  Continued    Source: Femi Akomolafe

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